Blood shed invites blood shed, and the city of Karsz teeters on the brink of a social war - unless Miria, the sixth wife of the demonic Lady Governor can bottom her way through an investigation of a violent crime. But can she do so while surviving the clashing expectations of gender imposed on her? And can she save her love while staying true to her self?
The Boy-Toy Wife (nsfw)
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Introduction and content warnings
Gargulec
impact!
- Location
- a garden
Introduction and content warnings
This story is intended to contain a significant density of pornographic material, centered around kinks from the broad D/S and S/M spectrum, as well as humiliation, and forced feminisation fetishes. It is also a story about violence, ethnic and transphobic, legacies of imperial domination, and clashing systems of gender. Themes of relationship neglect, gender dysphoria, and emotional abuse, both intentional, as well as not, will likewise make an appearance. As such, reader's advisory is suggested.
This story is intended to contain a significant density of pornographic material, centered around kinks from the broad D/S and S/M spectrum, as well as humiliation, and forced feminisation fetishes. It is also a story about violence, ethnic and transphobic, legacies of imperial domination, and clashing systems of gender. Themes of relationship neglect, gender dysphoria, and emotional abuse, both intentional, as well as not, will likewise make an appearance. As such, reader's advisory is suggested.
Chapter One: In Which Miria Has Her Measure Taken
Gargulec
impact!
- Location
- a garden
Chapter One: In Which Miria Has Her Measure Taken
On the day Miria was to be sized for a new chastity cage, she was woken shortly after dawn by the politely incessant hands of house-servants. The dull gray visible through a slit between the window curtains, forecasting yet another cold and damp spring day, hardly encouraged her to leave the heavy duvet's warmth – but the stern-faced Hofmeisterin would have none of that.
"Young lady," she demanded, staring half-awake Miria down, "time is of the essence."
That was not wrong. The new cage was Lady Governor's personal order, and so she was almost certainly going to make an appearance at the taking of measures, which in turn meant that Miria would have to be made as presentable as her body would allow. Still, she was not supposed to begrudge the old servant for the fact she did not even wait for Miria's permission to start pulling down the covers and forcing her out of the bed, even if it was doubtful that the other Lady Governor's wives would receive the same treatment.
But she was not the other ones; she was the sixth one. She suppressed a sigh she knew the Hofmeisterin would find unseemly and slid out of her bed, feet finding the warm slippers already waiting on the floor. Her hand moved to wipe the last of sleep away from her eyes, only to receive a stiff slap from the old servant. Instead, she bit down on a bitter must you, and blinked a few times.
Aside from the looming black tower that was the Hofmeisterin—who had a name once, Miria was certain, and would never allow anyone but the Lady Governor herself to use it—a pair of other servants flocked into the bed-chamber. One was a familiar sight: the stocky and perpetually smiling Agnes-the-house-beautician; the other, some yellow-haired maid with a child's face and a nervous glint in her eyes, Miria could not recognize. She had to be new.
"Mariś," the Hofmeisterin ordered, "robe for the young lady."
The girl rushed forward, almost tripping on the hem of her dress; moments later, Miria found herself enveloped in a thick and wonderfully warm fabric, almost soft enough to draw her back to sleep. But, alas, other matters were more pressing.
"The bath should be ready," she continued, her eyes still primed on the Lady Governor's sixth wife. "Take it from here, Agnes. But be prompt. We are expecting Master Glażek before noon."
Though it had been a number of months now—Miria entered the household in the closing days of autumn—she still had to resist the urge to protest being passed from hand to hand like that. Could she not take care of herself? She frowned, reminding herself that no, she could not. That was a part of the point.
That point was that now, she had a bathroom adjoining her bedchambers, tiled with real marbles, and lit by smokeless hellfire lamps, their bright light scintillating in the wall-length mirror opposite of the steaming bath. That point was that there was yet another maid, that slightly hunched one that everyone called Kaś, waiting by the tub, scrubs in hand and a shaving kit at the ready. That point was that once she pulled down her night-gown (which was as much as she was allowed to do on her own), she could spot the awkward, pyramid-shaped breasts slowly budding on the sides of her broad, revoltingly masculine chest.
In spite of her better instincts, she could not help herself, and looked up from that sorry display to where the wide shoulders converged towards a thick neck, where knotted cartilage shifted up and down the thin skin with every breath taken, and then higher still, to the dirty-black plain of young beard-shadow staining her jaw, and the uneven, retreating lines of hair whose length barely concealed that-
"Please cover it," she asked quietly, stepping into the warm bath, and the Kaś' steady hands.
Agnes pulled a curtain down, black cloth veiling the mirror, so that the image would slowly fade from Miria's eyes, or at least try to. She mouthed a quiet thank you to the beautician, as the maid slowly and carefully scrubbed her body pink. Reluctantly, but inevitably, she relaxed.
"So no breakfast for me, hm?" she asked in Agnes' direction, moving her chin up to give Kaś access to her neck.
"I'm sorry young lady," the beautician's voice reached her, warm and apologetic. "But you will have to be epilated and douched and so…"
She did not finish, leaving the implication unstated. It was the one thing Miria could never really get about this house, and the veil of modesty it tried to wrap around her position in it: that of the boy-toy wife. The role assigned to her was to be seen and played with, and nothing else. So why hang the voice, why leave unstated what was to follow the douching, which was also the reason that Miria was not going to see food today until way into the afternoon? Was Agnes trying to protect her from the reality she would have to live through anyway? The reality that Miria offered herself unto willingly?
Again, she had to stop herself from sighing, though this time it was on the account of the straight razor scraping against the skin of her cheeks. It had to be the weather, she conceded, the late March dreariness, that kept clouding her thoughts and drawing them to these kinds of useless wonderings. Had she not been excited for today just last night? Excited enough to steal a moment of privacy for herself and try to masturbate, a furtive pleasure only minimally disturbed by the unfortunate side-effects of the wife-medicine? Even now, she could feel something stir in her groin at the thought of what today was going to entail. And yet…
Fortunately for her melancholy, Kaś' was done with her work soon enough, and instead of languidly lounging in a warm bath, Miria ended up on a nearby gurney, yelping in quick succession as Agnes surely and steadily removed any trace of hair from her lower body.
"You were very brave today," the beautician offered—as she always did.
Miria tried to smile, and then managed to, her consciousness momentarily fading into the cooling, fragrant sensation of experienced hands rubbing expensive balms into her now-smooth skin. They smelled of infernal herbs that she could not name, nor even imagine, and which her father would likely compare to the odour of sin, or at least barbarous spices.
"Now, young lady, please…" an awkward hitch in Agnes' voice informed Miria what she was supposed to do next.
Biting her lip, and feeling that stir of shame and desire one more time, she pulled herself up and to the side slightly, offering Agnes' hands an easy access to her back. The cool probing of a metal nozzle followed seconds later, in a procedure that Miria still could not find routine. Nor, unfortunately, entirely unpleasant—especially with what was to immediately follow it.
"So," the beautician asked, once Miria was thoroughly cleaned down there, "which size were you wearing the last time?"
There was a sound of a wooden box opening somewhere behind Miria, and she could easily imagine both the container itself—ornamented with beautifully carved scenes of demonic hunts in an era long gone—and its contents, arranged from the smallest to the biggest.
"Four."
"And how was it?"
Once, when her life as a boy-toy wife still felt more like a fantasy, or a dream about to be interrupted, than a concrete reality, she answered that question with a lie; it ended up far less pleasant and far more painful than she had anticipated. She had learned since.
"A bit too large."
"Hm," Agnes nodded. "Lady Governor's tastes in this regard are known, but you will have to wear it for most of today, I worry. Will a three slip?"
"It shouldn't?" Miria replied with a hint of uncertainty.
"Very well, then," the words just carried the smile gracing the beautician's face as she picked the ornament from the box. "Please try to relax."
Cool, viscous liquid dripped between Miria's buttocks, shortly ahead those old experienced fingers prying her slightly open to make way for the metal bulb slipping inside. Lady Governor's boy-toy wife made a small gasp, but it hurt less than usual, and the sensation of a foreign body filling her up never failed to deliver on its illicit pleasures. She exhaled, letting Agnes test if the plug sat securely; when the beautician was satisfied, she let Miria back on her feet.
The Hofmeisterin took over from there. To Miria's slight surprise, the uniform prepared for her for the day was mostly an embodiment of modesty. Plain stockings, lacquered black shoes, a simple black dress reaching from the collar-bone past ankles, a wig coiffed into a conservative bun. If there was anything prepared for her that stood out from this common drabness, it was offered as a matter of necessity: a velvet choker topped with a lace rose, to hide the unseemly curvature of Miria's neck, the absence of an undergarment to facilitate easier access for master Glażek, and, obviously, the corset.
"That's better," the Hofmeisterin decided as Mariś finished lacing Miria's waist in a less revolting shape. "Agnes, make her up. But no eccentricity. Make sure it passes muster, no more."
The plug dug uncomfortably, lovingly into Miria's insides as the beautician sat her down before the dresser. She tried not to look at her face, however better it looked now that the toilettes were almost done; instead she returned, once again, to that nagging question of when was she going to be allowed to learn to work with poudres and rouges herself, instead of being a doll under someone else's brush. Perhaps never; the Hofmeisterin had scoffed when Miria last asked this question.
"All done," Agnes reported, offering Miria's face for inspection.
The make-up covered and highlighted enough that Miria could look at herself without wincing, and still left enough exposed that she could not forget what lay beneath. This satisfied the Hofmeisterin, mostly, which left just one more thing for this morning routine.
"Now, young lady," she commanded, her tone whip-sharp. "Your medicine."
The procedure was no different from any other day. The old servant produced a pair of pastilles, one dull green, the other bright red, and had Miria chew on each other thoroughly, watching her for any sign of trickery throughout. When she was satisfied there was no way for the sixth wife to avoid having ingested each pill, she marked it in a special journal. Not long after Miria was married to the Lady Governor, she pleaded with the Hofmeisterin that there was no need for such scrutiny, that she was more than willing to take her wife-medicine, and would not even consider trying to spit it out or otherwise avoid its influence. The old servant saw it as an obvious lie and example of lowlanders' famed duplicity; after all, it was well-known what their opinion of boy-wives and wife-medicine otherwise was.
At long last, it was time to move to see the craftsman, arrived all the way from Tall Pyres in the south to service the Lady Governor's latest wife. All the way to the study, the Hofmeisterin kept reminding Miria of what it took to be a lady. The refrain was familiar. Smaller steps, was one of her demands, or she would notice something wrong about Miria's hands and demand she work better to not draw attention to them and their shape. Some of those words slid right off the sixth wife. Others found purchase.
"And remember, eyes down, and hide your lust!" the old servant whispered, pushing open the oaken door into the sun-filled study.
Asha, by the grace of Her Infernal Majesty appointed the Lady Governor of the Lowland Province, formerly known as the kingdom of Leshia, was the first thing to grab Miria's attention. How could she not? Even seated behind her chestnut deck, even slightly hunched under the weight of her work, she still towered above her wife, and the entire world. Her blood was of pure demonic extraction, belonging to a line of infernal sovereigns that extended unbroken from the time of Azya the Dire Hand, and it showed: in the brick-red of her skin, in the gentle but precise curvature of her horns, in the way her nails tapered to jet-black claws, in the deep glow at the bottom of her dark eyes. When Miria first saw this woman stand a head and a half above her, she was stunned out of speech; when she first felt her heavy hand rest on her shoulder, she could only mewl incoherently; when she first tasted her kiss on the night they were married, she could not let it out of her thoughts for weeks on end.
"Lady wife," she whispered, keeping her voice low, so that its timbre would not betray its truth.
"Miria," the Lady Governor acknowledged her, briefly looking up from the piles of papers littering the desk. "Good."
As always, she sounded tired, her husky voice struggling to reach above a disinterested whisper. But Miria would not be brought before her if the Lady Governor did not want to see her, or at least that's what the sixth wife kept telling herself, trying to push back the rising tide of want and longing threatening to burst from her. A few steady breaths, first, then, look away, across the portraits of the Lady Governor's predecessors, then the bust of Her Infernal Majesty above the desks, along with an ornamental cavalry saber granted for merit in battle and politics, then all the shelves heavy under the weight of ancient books of demonic lore, and… that wiry, balding man in a slightly tattered frock-coat standing next to Miria's wife's desk.
"Do your work, Master Glażek," the Lady Governor commanded, returning to her papers.
The man swallowed nervously, then pointed Miria to a prepared stool, with cut-out left in it for easier access. Against the power of the wife-medicine, she felt herself stiffen, in more sense than one. She exhaled, then lowered herself as commanded, precisely aware of the way each movement of her hips shifted the plug inside her slightly, and how the shape of her arousal was starting to be seen through the fabric of her dress.
"Young lady," the artisan muttered, his stilted voice thick with the half-infernal accent of Tall Pyres workmen, "can I ask you please to pull your skirt up?"
Guided by sharp hope, Miria looked up towards the Lady Governor, scanning the demonic woman for any signs of interest in what was happening in front of her desk; but the papers drew her wife more than her member. The poudres on her cheeks could not hide the scarlet blush of shame that followed, especially not as she exposed the reality of her arousal to Master Glażek.
"Please, hold it up," he muttered again, reaching for the measuring tape. "Can I touch her?"
The question was not directed at Miria, which was yet another stab of frustrated pleasure. She hid her face behind the fold of a pulled-up skirt, doing her level best to keep her breath measured.
"Hm?" the Lady Governor flipped through a letter.
"I apologize," the artisan repeated, "but I asked if I am allowed to touch your wife?"
"Oh," the demonic woman chuckled briefly. "Obviously. Is it not your job?"
Master Glażek's hands skittered between Miria's legs, each scraping of the tape yet another reminder of what was happening to her, of what was being done to her. She struggled with her breath; her heart battered like a drum. Yet, for all that, the touch itself did nothing. The old man's hands were dry and devoid of desire, professionally taking the measurements of her length and width wherever that was needed. A pencil scratched against paper, and a record was being created.
"I have all at full flag," he announced after a moment. "But I need the rest now. And the young lady is very excited."
To his credit, he did not so much as cough out a chuckle, the words falling out of his mouth perfectly calm and professional. It was harder for Miria; she choked on some half-formed plea that ought better to not be voiced. The Lady Governor put the letter she was reading back on the pile, and finally looked again; for a split-second, Miria noticed the deep shadows under her wife's eyes; then, she looked politely away. This did not let her escape the next command, the one she was quietly dreaming of the entire time.
"Miria," the Lady Governor said, voice neutral and ostensibly disinterested. "Help master Glażek, and put yourself at rest."
This time, she could not help herself but to gasp.
"Here?" she asked, hoping to sound more shy than excited.
"If you can do it in your bedroom," the demonic woman picked up a handkerchief from a drawer, and passed it to her wife, "you can do it here, where at least I get to watch."
Of course someone saw her; of course she did not hide her small attempts at pleasure well enough. But if this was the reward, all the better. Half-excited, half-terrified, she reached underneath her hiked-up skirt, hand closing around her dick. Master Glażek shrugged, turning his attention away, to the contents of the shelves.
"Go slow."
Each movement she made—up and down—was a burning sting of shame. Her breath caught; her muscles seized up. She went slow because she was commanded to, and because she wanted this to never end, she wanted to stay in this mire of humiliation forever.
"Stop looking away," the Lady Governor's voice slapped her across her face. "Look at me."
Lifting her eyes up felt impossible, until she finally did and let the hunger hiding at the bottom of her wife's gaze pinion her in place. For a moment, she paused working herself, too terrified, or perhaps too excited.
"I want to be the only thing you can think of when you please yourself, or anyone," the Lady Governor's voice dropped to a predatory whisper, each word a barb meant to pierce through skin and reel the body and the want in. "Now fast-"
The door to the study banged open like a pistol-shot. In an instant, Miria startled, hand almost slipping free from her member; against the grain of her desire, she looked away from her wife's face, only to see Visza, the second wife, barge in with fury on her face.
"Asha!" she burst, eyes primed on the Lady Governor, arms thrown wide apart. "I am done wa-"
The second wife's eyes followed the Lady Governor's own gaze, from the desk to Miria, and then to Miria's hand, and what it was wound around. Mid-word, the shout withered on her lips. A brief, unfortunate silence took over the study, interrupted only by Master Glażek's dry cough; the sixth wife could not figure out where to put her hands, or her eyes, and so remained frozen in place, the weight of Visza's stare resting heavily on her. The air refused to flow into a corset-cinched chest; the crest of pleasure, seemingly so close mere moments ago curdled instantly.
"You are interrupting," the Lady Governor exhaled, putting her hands on the desk, and pulling herself up to her whole height, the tips of her horns close to scratching the blackened wood beams of the ceiling above.
Fear was only a natural response; Miria had received sufficient warning as to what lurked behind the Lady Governor's calm, and what should never be provoked. For a split second, she imagined fury, she imagined harm, she imagined Visza hurt. No such thing came to pass. Transfixed, Miria watched her wife expand, filling the room with her presence, with the smell of smoke and resin which followed whenever the great demonic heart stirred. And yet, the cloven feet did not smash against the floor; the claws did not swipe through the air to mark cheeks red and blood. In two steps, the Lady Governor moved before her second wife, grabbing her hands into her own and lifting the smaller woman slightly off the floor.
"I'm sorry," Visza whispered as the two met in a warm embrace.
"Don't be," the Lady Governor whispered back, resting her again securely down. "You're upset."
Whatever worry remained in Miria dissipated, replaced by an altogether more familiar, though no less unpleasant feeling. When Visza spoke, her voice was like her body: perfectly shaped and trained, no longer bearing any tells that could betray the truth and origin. Maybe, if Miria was to stress all of her senses, she could still pick some details here and there: those outside knuckles, for example, though still positively dainty when interwoven with the Lady Governor's great claws. Or the way her jawline curved, so perfect it had to be sculpted by hand, for nature alone would never produce a beauty so precise. Jealousy, so small and so ugly, speared Miria across the heart as she watched the Lady Governor give an adoring kiss to an unruly wife, a wife in the proper sense of the word, and not some boy-toy to be played with like a cheap doll.
The Lady Governor's attention now fully away from her, Miria let her skirt fall back in place, and wiped her hand in the handkerchief, some bizarre and useless part of her suddenly wishing to sniff that piece of cloth, as if that could serve as an ersatz of the closeness and intimacy now playing out in front of her.
"Of course I am upset," Visza muttered nuzzling the Lady Governor's shoulder, before slipping away from her, only to be pulled back into yet another embrace. "I want to talk."
Something difficult flashed through the Lady Governor's face; she threw an aside-glance towards Miria, in a sense almost apologetic. She let Visza go, her lips pulling into a taut, troubled line.
"Can it wait? I am almost done here, and we can…"
"The service is in an hour," Visza cut in. "I need to be in the temple by then."
That alone would be enough to make Miria wince, let alone the mention of the temple. That the Lady Governor's second wife refused to give up the lowlander religion, in spite of its well-known hostility to the crown of Her Imperial Majesty, and more specifically to customs and traditions so close to the Lady Governor's own heart, was often gossiped about in the house, and well-known outside of it. Long before her marriage, Miria would hear it discussed at her family's table, Visza's insistence on showing up to pray to the Holy, while sitting among women no less, brought up as a sign of either depravity, or defiance. She had always imagined it, therefore, as something shameful, like her occasional visit's to her family's home: that is something frowned upon, and never mentioned openly before the Lady Governor herself. Yet again, it seemed that the rules she was to live by were not the ones that bound Visza. Yet again, jealousy made her stomach twist.
"Afterwards, then," the Lady Governor sighed, tone so clearly suffused with apology that Miria could scarcely believe it came out of her wife's mouth. "Please."
The second wife threw a stray lock of her golden hair away, let the perfect red of her lips' paint render her pout vivid and proud. She stood her ground.
"Do you not think she," a single claw indicated Miria, the single she spoken emptily and without heat, "deserves some attention too?"
Visza threw another glance in Miria's direction, and the sixth wife did not have to strain herself to imagine what she was seeing—the same thing that Miria saw in the mirror, back in the bathroom.
"A dinner for us two only," the Lady Governor whispered, the first time her sixth wife has ever heard her plead. "And you can stay for the night."
Only once had Miria been given the privilege of sharing a meal in private with her lady wife: on the night of their marriage. Only once had she been allowed to stay for the night in her wife's bed and embrace. And here, this gift, this dream, was being bartered and scoffed at by a woman so perfectly beautiful that even looking at her was a blow to the stomach, that sharp reminder of everything Miria was not, and was never going to become. In that moment she decided, unprompted, but also without doubt, that she really did hate Visza.
"Fine," the second wife shrugged. "But get yourself properly prepared this time."
The Lady Governor did not respond, merely glanced aside, a strange shade of purple briefly painting her cheeks. When she straightened moments later, Visza was gone, the clicking of her heels fading into the distance of the corridor outside. Another stretch of unfortunate silence opened, Miria passing time squishing the handkerchief between her fingers.
"Ahem," Master Glażek coughed again, finally finishing his investigation of the Lady Governor's bookshelf.
The demonic woman muttered an ugly word under her breath, collapsing into her chair once more.
"My apologies," she said, swiping a pile of papers aside. "To the both of you. Visza can be difficult, sometimes. Difficult to placate."
Neither Miria, nor the artisan, said anything.
"Do you have everything, Master Glażak?" the next question rang out into the awkward silence.
"I," the man tapped his foot a few times, lingering on the word, "I still need her measurements when soft."
"Right," the Lady Governor waved her hand, as if to capture some straight thought. "Miria?"
"This will not be a problem, lady wife," she replied, and that was no lie.
Whatever arousal was there before, whatever lust or desire, had all vanished. She held her skirt up for Master Glaźak's professional measurement, the procedure as banal and uninteresting as being inspected by the Hofmeisterin for signs of self-harm. At least it went quickly, marked by the final scratching of the pencil.
"All done," the man announced, hiding the notebook in his bag. "Now I will just have to ask what sort of a cage are we looking for here? Permanent, semi-permanent? Play? Punishment?"
The Lady Governor rubbed her temples, claws brushing between the clumped, spike-like hair. Nothing on her face seemed inviting, or happy.
"I will write you a letter with the specification later," she declared, dismissing the matter. "You can go."
Some unpleasant part of Miria realized that there would be no new chastity cage for her; that Visza spoiled that fancy, too. She deflated, as much as the corset would allow her. The artisan left, shutting the door tight behind himself, and leaving her alone with her wife. In some ways, it was everything that Miria had wanted out of today, or almost everything. In most others, it felt merely wretched. She avoided the Lady Governor's eyes, staring into the thick rug carpeting the floor and thinking of nothing but returning to her quarters, being rid of the plug, maybe allowed to eat finally, and-
"I'm sorry," the Lady Governor muttered, heavy and sad. "I had plans for us. But Vi-," she stuttered on the name, and left it out. "But now I only have a headache."
The words were nothing more but further confirmation of what Miria had already known.
"Of course, lady wife," she responded automatically.
Papers rustled as the demonic woman rearranged them around the desk into new, equally unruly piles. There was personal correspondence among them, and morning papers, and official records: a sea of ink and paper enough to drown anyone. It was no small task, governing a province. Especially one as resistant as the Lowlands.
"I promise," the Lady Governor evened out a block of papers, her hand pressing them tightly together, "I promise I will make it up to you, some time soon."
One more noxious pause followed, filled with questioning glances, and the mounting sense of waste. Miria skipped from one leg to another, though it was one of those habits the Hofmeisterin would have slapped out of her as inappropriate. If the Lady Governor noticed, she did not let it be known. In any case something else was taking her attention.
"You are jealous?" she asked in a way that was more of a statement of a fact.
"Of course not, lady wife," Miria lied.
It was not a very good lie, and some deeply frustrated side of her would love nothing more but to be called out on it, perhaps brought to heel for such misbehaviour, or at least acknowledged in some more solid, substantial way. The word for this desire was petulance, and as always, it did not go rewarded.
"That is good," the Lady Governor exhaled, far too exhausted—by things boy-toys like Miria were not privy to know—to be able to care for petty, empty lies. "Keep it up. You can go."
On the day Miria was to be sized for a new chastity cage, she was woken shortly after dawn by the politely incessant hands of house-servants. The dull gray visible through a slit between the window curtains, forecasting yet another cold and damp spring day, hardly encouraged her to leave the heavy duvet's warmth – but the stern-faced Hofmeisterin would have none of that.
"Young lady," she demanded, staring half-awake Miria down, "time is of the essence."
That was not wrong. The new cage was Lady Governor's personal order, and so she was almost certainly going to make an appearance at the taking of measures, which in turn meant that Miria would have to be made as presentable as her body would allow. Still, she was not supposed to begrudge the old servant for the fact she did not even wait for Miria's permission to start pulling down the covers and forcing her out of the bed, even if it was doubtful that the other Lady Governor's wives would receive the same treatment.
But she was not the other ones; she was the sixth one. She suppressed a sigh she knew the Hofmeisterin would find unseemly and slid out of her bed, feet finding the warm slippers already waiting on the floor. Her hand moved to wipe the last of sleep away from her eyes, only to receive a stiff slap from the old servant. Instead, she bit down on a bitter must you, and blinked a few times.
Aside from the looming black tower that was the Hofmeisterin—who had a name once, Miria was certain, and would never allow anyone but the Lady Governor herself to use it—a pair of other servants flocked into the bed-chamber. One was a familiar sight: the stocky and perpetually smiling Agnes-the-house-beautician; the other, some yellow-haired maid with a child's face and a nervous glint in her eyes, Miria could not recognize. She had to be new.
"Mariś," the Hofmeisterin ordered, "robe for the young lady."
The girl rushed forward, almost tripping on the hem of her dress; moments later, Miria found herself enveloped in a thick and wonderfully warm fabric, almost soft enough to draw her back to sleep. But, alas, other matters were more pressing.
"The bath should be ready," she continued, her eyes still primed on the Lady Governor's sixth wife. "Take it from here, Agnes. But be prompt. We are expecting Master Glażek before noon."
Though it had been a number of months now—Miria entered the household in the closing days of autumn—she still had to resist the urge to protest being passed from hand to hand like that. Could she not take care of herself? She frowned, reminding herself that no, she could not. That was a part of the point.
That point was that now, she had a bathroom adjoining her bedchambers, tiled with real marbles, and lit by smokeless hellfire lamps, their bright light scintillating in the wall-length mirror opposite of the steaming bath. That point was that there was yet another maid, that slightly hunched one that everyone called Kaś, waiting by the tub, scrubs in hand and a shaving kit at the ready. That point was that once she pulled down her night-gown (which was as much as she was allowed to do on her own), she could spot the awkward, pyramid-shaped breasts slowly budding on the sides of her broad, revoltingly masculine chest.
In spite of her better instincts, she could not help herself, and looked up from that sorry display to where the wide shoulders converged towards a thick neck, where knotted cartilage shifted up and down the thin skin with every breath taken, and then higher still, to the dirty-black plain of young beard-shadow staining her jaw, and the uneven, retreating lines of hair whose length barely concealed that-
"Please cover it," she asked quietly, stepping into the warm bath, and the Kaś' steady hands.
Agnes pulled a curtain down, black cloth veiling the mirror, so that the image would slowly fade from Miria's eyes, or at least try to. She mouthed a quiet thank you to the beautician, as the maid slowly and carefully scrubbed her body pink. Reluctantly, but inevitably, she relaxed.
"So no breakfast for me, hm?" she asked in Agnes' direction, moving her chin up to give Kaś access to her neck.
"I'm sorry young lady," the beautician's voice reached her, warm and apologetic. "But you will have to be epilated and douched and so…"
She did not finish, leaving the implication unstated. It was the one thing Miria could never really get about this house, and the veil of modesty it tried to wrap around her position in it: that of the boy-toy wife. The role assigned to her was to be seen and played with, and nothing else. So why hang the voice, why leave unstated what was to follow the douching, which was also the reason that Miria was not going to see food today until way into the afternoon? Was Agnes trying to protect her from the reality she would have to live through anyway? The reality that Miria offered herself unto willingly?
Again, she had to stop herself from sighing, though this time it was on the account of the straight razor scraping against the skin of her cheeks. It had to be the weather, she conceded, the late March dreariness, that kept clouding her thoughts and drawing them to these kinds of useless wonderings. Had she not been excited for today just last night? Excited enough to steal a moment of privacy for herself and try to masturbate, a furtive pleasure only minimally disturbed by the unfortunate side-effects of the wife-medicine? Even now, she could feel something stir in her groin at the thought of what today was going to entail. And yet…
Fortunately for her melancholy, Kaś' was done with her work soon enough, and instead of languidly lounging in a warm bath, Miria ended up on a nearby gurney, yelping in quick succession as Agnes surely and steadily removed any trace of hair from her lower body.
"You were very brave today," the beautician offered—as she always did.
Miria tried to smile, and then managed to, her consciousness momentarily fading into the cooling, fragrant sensation of experienced hands rubbing expensive balms into her now-smooth skin. They smelled of infernal herbs that she could not name, nor even imagine, and which her father would likely compare to the odour of sin, or at least barbarous spices.
"Now, young lady, please…" an awkward hitch in Agnes' voice informed Miria what she was supposed to do next.
Biting her lip, and feeling that stir of shame and desire one more time, she pulled herself up and to the side slightly, offering Agnes' hands an easy access to her back. The cool probing of a metal nozzle followed seconds later, in a procedure that Miria still could not find routine. Nor, unfortunately, entirely unpleasant—especially with what was to immediately follow it.
"So," the beautician asked, once Miria was thoroughly cleaned down there, "which size were you wearing the last time?"
There was a sound of a wooden box opening somewhere behind Miria, and she could easily imagine both the container itself—ornamented with beautifully carved scenes of demonic hunts in an era long gone—and its contents, arranged from the smallest to the biggest.
"Four."
"And how was it?"
Once, when her life as a boy-toy wife still felt more like a fantasy, or a dream about to be interrupted, than a concrete reality, she answered that question with a lie; it ended up far less pleasant and far more painful than she had anticipated. She had learned since.
"A bit too large."
"Hm," Agnes nodded. "Lady Governor's tastes in this regard are known, but you will have to wear it for most of today, I worry. Will a three slip?"
"It shouldn't?" Miria replied with a hint of uncertainty.
"Very well, then," the words just carried the smile gracing the beautician's face as she picked the ornament from the box. "Please try to relax."
Cool, viscous liquid dripped between Miria's buttocks, shortly ahead those old experienced fingers prying her slightly open to make way for the metal bulb slipping inside. Lady Governor's boy-toy wife made a small gasp, but it hurt less than usual, and the sensation of a foreign body filling her up never failed to deliver on its illicit pleasures. She exhaled, letting Agnes test if the plug sat securely; when the beautician was satisfied, she let Miria back on her feet.
The Hofmeisterin took over from there. To Miria's slight surprise, the uniform prepared for her for the day was mostly an embodiment of modesty. Plain stockings, lacquered black shoes, a simple black dress reaching from the collar-bone past ankles, a wig coiffed into a conservative bun. If there was anything prepared for her that stood out from this common drabness, it was offered as a matter of necessity: a velvet choker topped with a lace rose, to hide the unseemly curvature of Miria's neck, the absence of an undergarment to facilitate easier access for master Glażek, and, obviously, the corset.
"That's better," the Hofmeisterin decided as Mariś finished lacing Miria's waist in a less revolting shape. "Agnes, make her up. But no eccentricity. Make sure it passes muster, no more."
The plug dug uncomfortably, lovingly into Miria's insides as the beautician sat her down before the dresser. She tried not to look at her face, however better it looked now that the toilettes were almost done; instead she returned, once again, to that nagging question of when was she going to be allowed to learn to work with poudres and rouges herself, instead of being a doll under someone else's brush. Perhaps never; the Hofmeisterin had scoffed when Miria last asked this question.
"All done," Agnes reported, offering Miria's face for inspection.
The make-up covered and highlighted enough that Miria could look at herself without wincing, and still left enough exposed that she could not forget what lay beneath. This satisfied the Hofmeisterin, mostly, which left just one more thing for this morning routine.
"Now, young lady," she commanded, her tone whip-sharp. "Your medicine."
The procedure was no different from any other day. The old servant produced a pair of pastilles, one dull green, the other bright red, and had Miria chew on each other thoroughly, watching her for any sign of trickery throughout. When she was satisfied there was no way for the sixth wife to avoid having ingested each pill, she marked it in a special journal. Not long after Miria was married to the Lady Governor, she pleaded with the Hofmeisterin that there was no need for such scrutiny, that she was more than willing to take her wife-medicine, and would not even consider trying to spit it out or otherwise avoid its influence. The old servant saw it as an obvious lie and example of lowlanders' famed duplicity; after all, it was well-known what their opinion of boy-wives and wife-medicine otherwise was.
At long last, it was time to move to see the craftsman, arrived all the way from Tall Pyres in the south to service the Lady Governor's latest wife. All the way to the study, the Hofmeisterin kept reminding Miria of what it took to be a lady. The refrain was familiar. Smaller steps, was one of her demands, or she would notice something wrong about Miria's hands and demand she work better to not draw attention to them and their shape. Some of those words slid right off the sixth wife. Others found purchase.
"And remember, eyes down, and hide your lust!" the old servant whispered, pushing open the oaken door into the sun-filled study.
Asha, by the grace of Her Infernal Majesty appointed the Lady Governor of the Lowland Province, formerly known as the kingdom of Leshia, was the first thing to grab Miria's attention. How could she not? Even seated behind her chestnut deck, even slightly hunched under the weight of her work, she still towered above her wife, and the entire world. Her blood was of pure demonic extraction, belonging to a line of infernal sovereigns that extended unbroken from the time of Azya the Dire Hand, and it showed: in the brick-red of her skin, in the gentle but precise curvature of her horns, in the way her nails tapered to jet-black claws, in the deep glow at the bottom of her dark eyes. When Miria first saw this woman stand a head and a half above her, she was stunned out of speech; when she first felt her heavy hand rest on her shoulder, she could only mewl incoherently; when she first tasted her kiss on the night they were married, she could not let it out of her thoughts for weeks on end.
"Lady wife," she whispered, keeping her voice low, so that its timbre would not betray its truth.
"Miria," the Lady Governor acknowledged her, briefly looking up from the piles of papers littering the desk. "Good."
As always, she sounded tired, her husky voice struggling to reach above a disinterested whisper. But Miria would not be brought before her if the Lady Governor did not want to see her, or at least that's what the sixth wife kept telling herself, trying to push back the rising tide of want and longing threatening to burst from her. A few steady breaths, first, then, look away, across the portraits of the Lady Governor's predecessors, then the bust of Her Infernal Majesty above the desks, along with an ornamental cavalry saber granted for merit in battle and politics, then all the shelves heavy under the weight of ancient books of demonic lore, and… that wiry, balding man in a slightly tattered frock-coat standing next to Miria's wife's desk.
"Do your work, Master Glażek," the Lady Governor commanded, returning to her papers.
The man swallowed nervously, then pointed Miria to a prepared stool, with cut-out left in it for easier access. Against the power of the wife-medicine, she felt herself stiffen, in more sense than one. She exhaled, then lowered herself as commanded, precisely aware of the way each movement of her hips shifted the plug inside her slightly, and how the shape of her arousal was starting to be seen through the fabric of her dress.
"Young lady," the artisan muttered, his stilted voice thick with the half-infernal accent of Tall Pyres workmen, "can I ask you please to pull your skirt up?"
Guided by sharp hope, Miria looked up towards the Lady Governor, scanning the demonic woman for any signs of interest in what was happening in front of her desk; but the papers drew her wife more than her member. The poudres on her cheeks could not hide the scarlet blush of shame that followed, especially not as she exposed the reality of her arousal to Master Glażek.
"Please, hold it up," he muttered again, reaching for the measuring tape. "Can I touch her?"
The question was not directed at Miria, which was yet another stab of frustrated pleasure. She hid her face behind the fold of a pulled-up skirt, doing her level best to keep her breath measured.
"Hm?" the Lady Governor flipped through a letter.
"I apologize," the artisan repeated, "but I asked if I am allowed to touch your wife?"
"Oh," the demonic woman chuckled briefly. "Obviously. Is it not your job?"
Master Glażek's hands skittered between Miria's legs, each scraping of the tape yet another reminder of what was happening to her, of what was being done to her. She struggled with her breath; her heart battered like a drum. Yet, for all that, the touch itself did nothing. The old man's hands were dry and devoid of desire, professionally taking the measurements of her length and width wherever that was needed. A pencil scratched against paper, and a record was being created.
"I have all at full flag," he announced after a moment. "But I need the rest now. And the young lady is very excited."
To his credit, he did not so much as cough out a chuckle, the words falling out of his mouth perfectly calm and professional. It was harder for Miria; she choked on some half-formed plea that ought better to not be voiced. The Lady Governor put the letter she was reading back on the pile, and finally looked again; for a split-second, Miria noticed the deep shadows under her wife's eyes; then, she looked politely away. This did not let her escape the next command, the one she was quietly dreaming of the entire time.
"Miria," the Lady Governor said, voice neutral and ostensibly disinterested. "Help master Glażek, and put yourself at rest."
This time, she could not help herself but to gasp.
"Here?" she asked, hoping to sound more shy than excited.
"If you can do it in your bedroom," the demonic woman picked up a handkerchief from a drawer, and passed it to her wife, "you can do it here, where at least I get to watch."
Of course someone saw her; of course she did not hide her small attempts at pleasure well enough. But if this was the reward, all the better. Half-excited, half-terrified, she reached underneath her hiked-up skirt, hand closing around her dick. Master Glażek shrugged, turning his attention away, to the contents of the shelves.
"Go slow."
Each movement she made—up and down—was a burning sting of shame. Her breath caught; her muscles seized up. She went slow because she was commanded to, and because she wanted this to never end, she wanted to stay in this mire of humiliation forever.
"Stop looking away," the Lady Governor's voice slapped her across her face. "Look at me."
Lifting her eyes up felt impossible, until she finally did and let the hunger hiding at the bottom of her wife's gaze pinion her in place. For a moment, she paused working herself, too terrified, or perhaps too excited.
"I want to be the only thing you can think of when you please yourself, or anyone," the Lady Governor's voice dropped to a predatory whisper, each word a barb meant to pierce through skin and reel the body and the want in. "Now fast-"
The door to the study banged open like a pistol-shot. In an instant, Miria startled, hand almost slipping free from her member; against the grain of her desire, she looked away from her wife's face, only to see Visza, the second wife, barge in with fury on her face.
"Asha!" she burst, eyes primed on the Lady Governor, arms thrown wide apart. "I am done wa-"
The second wife's eyes followed the Lady Governor's own gaze, from the desk to Miria, and then to Miria's hand, and what it was wound around. Mid-word, the shout withered on her lips. A brief, unfortunate silence took over the study, interrupted only by Master Glażek's dry cough; the sixth wife could not figure out where to put her hands, or her eyes, and so remained frozen in place, the weight of Visza's stare resting heavily on her. The air refused to flow into a corset-cinched chest; the crest of pleasure, seemingly so close mere moments ago curdled instantly.
"You are interrupting," the Lady Governor exhaled, putting her hands on the desk, and pulling herself up to her whole height, the tips of her horns close to scratching the blackened wood beams of the ceiling above.
Fear was only a natural response; Miria had received sufficient warning as to what lurked behind the Lady Governor's calm, and what should never be provoked. For a split second, she imagined fury, she imagined harm, she imagined Visza hurt. No such thing came to pass. Transfixed, Miria watched her wife expand, filling the room with her presence, with the smell of smoke and resin which followed whenever the great demonic heart stirred. And yet, the cloven feet did not smash against the floor; the claws did not swipe through the air to mark cheeks red and blood. In two steps, the Lady Governor moved before her second wife, grabbing her hands into her own and lifting the smaller woman slightly off the floor.
"I'm sorry," Visza whispered as the two met in a warm embrace.
"Don't be," the Lady Governor whispered back, resting her again securely down. "You're upset."
Whatever worry remained in Miria dissipated, replaced by an altogether more familiar, though no less unpleasant feeling. When Visza spoke, her voice was like her body: perfectly shaped and trained, no longer bearing any tells that could betray the truth and origin. Maybe, if Miria was to stress all of her senses, she could still pick some details here and there: those outside knuckles, for example, though still positively dainty when interwoven with the Lady Governor's great claws. Or the way her jawline curved, so perfect it had to be sculpted by hand, for nature alone would never produce a beauty so precise. Jealousy, so small and so ugly, speared Miria across the heart as she watched the Lady Governor give an adoring kiss to an unruly wife, a wife in the proper sense of the word, and not some boy-toy to be played with like a cheap doll.
The Lady Governor's attention now fully away from her, Miria let her skirt fall back in place, and wiped her hand in the handkerchief, some bizarre and useless part of her suddenly wishing to sniff that piece of cloth, as if that could serve as an ersatz of the closeness and intimacy now playing out in front of her.
"Of course I am upset," Visza muttered nuzzling the Lady Governor's shoulder, before slipping away from her, only to be pulled back into yet another embrace. "I want to talk."
Something difficult flashed through the Lady Governor's face; she threw an aside-glance towards Miria, in a sense almost apologetic. She let Visza go, her lips pulling into a taut, troubled line.
"Can it wait? I am almost done here, and we can…"
"The service is in an hour," Visza cut in. "I need to be in the temple by then."
That alone would be enough to make Miria wince, let alone the mention of the temple. That the Lady Governor's second wife refused to give up the lowlander religion, in spite of its well-known hostility to the crown of Her Imperial Majesty, and more specifically to customs and traditions so close to the Lady Governor's own heart, was often gossiped about in the house, and well-known outside of it. Long before her marriage, Miria would hear it discussed at her family's table, Visza's insistence on showing up to pray to the Holy, while sitting among women no less, brought up as a sign of either depravity, or defiance. She had always imagined it, therefore, as something shameful, like her occasional visit's to her family's home: that is something frowned upon, and never mentioned openly before the Lady Governor herself. Yet again, it seemed that the rules she was to live by were not the ones that bound Visza. Yet again, jealousy made her stomach twist.
"Afterwards, then," the Lady Governor sighed, tone so clearly suffused with apology that Miria could scarcely believe it came out of her wife's mouth. "Please."
The second wife threw a stray lock of her golden hair away, let the perfect red of her lips' paint render her pout vivid and proud. She stood her ground.
"Do you not think she," a single claw indicated Miria, the single she spoken emptily and without heat, "deserves some attention too?"
Visza threw another glance in Miria's direction, and the sixth wife did not have to strain herself to imagine what she was seeing—the same thing that Miria saw in the mirror, back in the bathroom.
"A dinner for us two only," the Lady Governor whispered, the first time her sixth wife has ever heard her plead. "And you can stay for the night."
Only once had Miria been given the privilege of sharing a meal in private with her lady wife: on the night of their marriage. Only once had she been allowed to stay for the night in her wife's bed and embrace. And here, this gift, this dream, was being bartered and scoffed at by a woman so perfectly beautiful that even looking at her was a blow to the stomach, that sharp reminder of everything Miria was not, and was never going to become. In that moment she decided, unprompted, but also without doubt, that she really did hate Visza.
"Fine," the second wife shrugged. "But get yourself properly prepared this time."
The Lady Governor did not respond, merely glanced aside, a strange shade of purple briefly painting her cheeks. When she straightened moments later, Visza was gone, the clicking of her heels fading into the distance of the corridor outside. Another stretch of unfortunate silence opened, Miria passing time squishing the handkerchief between her fingers.
"Ahem," Master Glażek coughed again, finally finishing his investigation of the Lady Governor's bookshelf.
The demonic woman muttered an ugly word under her breath, collapsing into her chair once more.
"My apologies," she said, swiping a pile of papers aside. "To the both of you. Visza can be difficult, sometimes. Difficult to placate."
Neither Miria, nor the artisan, said anything.
"Do you have everything, Master Glażak?" the next question rang out into the awkward silence.
"I," the man tapped his foot a few times, lingering on the word, "I still need her measurements when soft."
"Right," the Lady Governor waved her hand, as if to capture some straight thought. "Miria?"
"This will not be a problem, lady wife," she replied, and that was no lie.
Whatever arousal was there before, whatever lust or desire, had all vanished. She held her skirt up for Master Glaźak's professional measurement, the procedure as banal and uninteresting as being inspected by the Hofmeisterin for signs of self-harm. At least it went quickly, marked by the final scratching of the pencil.
"All done," the man announced, hiding the notebook in his bag. "Now I will just have to ask what sort of a cage are we looking for here? Permanent, semi-permanent? Play? Punishment?"
The Lady Governor rubbed her temples, claws brushing between the clumped, spike-like hair. Nothing on her face seemed inviting, or happy.
"I will write you a letter with the specification later," she declared, dismissing the matter. "You can go."
Some unpleasant part of Miria realized that there would be no new chastity cage for her; that Visza spoiled that fancy, too. She deflated, as much as the corset would allow her. The artisan left, shutting the door tight behind himself, and leaving her alone with her wife. In some ways, it was everything that Miria had wanted out of today, or almost everything. In most others, it felt merely wretched. She avoided the Lady Governor's eyes, staring into the thick rug carpeting the floor and thinking of nothing but returning to her quarters, being rid of the plug, maybe allowed to eat finally, and-
"I'm sorry," the Lady Governor muttered, heavy and sad. "I had plans for us. But Vi-," she stuttered on the name, and left it out. "But now I only have a headache."
The words were nothing more but further confirmation of what Miria had already known.
"Of course, lady wife," she responded automatically.
Papers rustled as the demonic woman rearranged them around the desk into new, equally unruly piles. There was personal correspondence among them, and morning papers, and official records: a sea of ink and paper enough to drown anyone. It was no small task, governing a province. Especially one as resistant as the Lowlands.
"I promise," the Lady Governor evened out a block of papers, her hand pressing them tightly together, "I promise I will make it up to you, some time soon."
One more noxious pause followed, filled with questioning glances, and the mounting sense of waste. Miria skipped from one leg to another, though it was one of those habits the Hofmeisterin would have slapped out of her as inappropriate. If the Lady Governor noticed, she did not let it be known. In any case something else was taking her attention.
"You are jealous?" she asked in a way that was more of a statement of a fact.
"Of course not, lady wife," Miria lied.
It was not a very good lie, and some deeply frustrated side of her would love nothing more but to be called out on it, perhaps brought to heel for such misbehaviour, or at least acknowledged in some more solid, substantial way. The word for this desire was petulance, and as always, it did not go rewarded.
"That is good," the Lady Governor exhaled, far too exhausted—by things boy-toys like Miria were not privy to know—to be able to care for petty, empty lies. "Keep it up. You can go."
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- Pronouns
- She/Her
I see you're unfamiliar with Gargulec's series of rather avant-garde erotica.
Don't be fooled by the smut, they tend to be well plotted and themed.
Not certain I've ever read any erotica that seems quite so cerebral, no. I'm curious, if nothing else... even if the kinks mentioned in the header are very much not to my taste.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Mercy And Other Costly Mistakes might be more up your alley in that case.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Having peaked a bit ahead, very excited to see where this one goes!
seems ok but i cant take it seriously here with the past actions of the mods in regard to other stories and authors that have been banished from here.
i would be interested in reading this on qq but i find the situation much to amusing to enjoy here.
i would be interested in reading this on qq but i find the situation much to amusing to enjoy here.
Gargulec
impact!
- Location
- a garden
- Pronouns
- She/Her
maybe those authors shouldnt have written explicit scenes with minors?
- Pronouns
- She/Her
It's interesting what we can infer about worldbuilding from what we know so far.
It seems like the Infernals are an imperialist power, and the social expectations for their wives implies it may have started as a way of humiliating the people they conquered by taking their sons and turning them into the Infernals' wives. But the vibe I get based on the interactions between Asha and Visza is that the role has evolved over time into something less directly confrontational, through still weighted down by it's historical context.
It seems like the Infernals are an imperialist power, and the social expectations for their wives implies it may have started as a way of humiliating the people they conquered by taking their sons and turning them into the Infernals' wives. But the vibe I get based on the interactions between Asha and Visza is that the role has evolved over time into something less directly confrontational, through still weighted down by it's historical context.
Chapter Two: In Which a Lesson is Rendered
Gargulec
impact!
- Location
- a garden
Chapter Two: In Which a Lesson is Rendered
"And where do you think you're going, young lady?"
The Hofmeisterin crossed into Miria's path before the door to the Lady Governor's study even managed to shut. In spite of the fact that it was her duty to oversee all the dozens of servants who provided for the household, she'd apparently made time to lurk in wait at her mistress' doorstep. Miria shot her a dour look, but ground to a halt.
"I have been dismissed," she replied, trying to affect a steady voice, while still shifting into the higher pitch that the Hofmeisterin demanded. "I was going to find Agnes, and then return to my room."
The expression on the old woman's face turned from stern to severe—expectedly so. She shook her head in open disapproval, yet again reminding Miria of how it seemed to make no difference whether she was being honest or not. The presumption was always the same: the duplicitous lowlander, looking to shirk from her wifely duties.
"And why were you intending on seeking Agnes?" she asked, the set-up blatantly obvious in the question.
Miria fixed her eyes on a yellowed oil painting visible above and past the Hofmeisterin's shoulder. Some baby-faced aristocrat of the old kingdom sat pensive in it, focusing on the inevitable passing of the golden age. As with most decorations that the Lady Governor inherited after the previous owners of the palace, it buckled under the weight of overaffected, sentimental detail. The mannerist style damned the entire work to remain little more than a testament to history's bad taste.
"To return the plug to her?" she tried an answer that felt least likely to confirm prior biases. "For cleaning."
"Hm. Absolutely not."
On any other day—well, on most other days, at least—this response, spat at her with lightly disdainful fury, would likely make Miria squirm with excitement. She would think of being forced to wear that metal bulb up her ass as she hid in her own boy-toy wife's bedroom, one hand gripping the medicine-shrunk dick, the other pushing on the plug to feel it press against the innermost parts of her pleasure. Moments like these were why she offered herself for marriage, were they not? Why else would she accept it if not for the want of this heady mix of lust, shame, and subservience? But today, she was just tired and sore, and wanted that damn lump out of her, so that she could eat a normal meal, take a normal shit, and then lock herself in her room and cry a little bit into a trusted comfort pillow.
"That the Lady Governor dismissed you does not liberate you from the duty to prepare your body for servicing her, should she ever…"
Miria's lips twitched at the mention of that ever. A bitter smile flashed through her face, before she suppressed it lest the Hofmeisterin notice. Fortunately, she was too caught up in her own tirade to pay sufficient attention.
"...decide to make use out of you. At that point, you need to be able to receive the fullness of her attention, without a whimper of a complaint! This is the sole duty you have in this house, the core of your vows, and you will not neglect it, even if the Lady Governor is otherwise occupied. Are we understood?"
"Yes, Hofmeisterin."
"You will stay as you are until dinner," the old servant continued, spitting out each word like a whip-strike, "and until then, do you know what you will be doing?"
Miria did not know, although she could suspect. She peeled her eyes away from that terrible painting to meet the Hofmeisterin's merciless stare. The joke was, of course, that technically, she was not supposed to take orders here; even as a sixth-wife, and a boy-toy one at that, she still stood above servants in the hierarchy of this household. But the Hofmeisterin, though pure human, was of the infernal lands, five decades of service impressing the wrinkled, taut face with an authority that a lowlander girlthing would not be allowed to gainsay. Assuming, that is, she would even want to: on any other day, it would be exactly the kind of a subjugation she not-so-secretly longed for. But today hurt differently.
"Remind me," the Hofmeisterin continued, "what should a boy-toy wife do, if she has failed to satisfy her wife?"
The pronouns, so clearly uttered, were a barb, meant to cut, to remind the lowlander of what she was being made to be. This time, however, even Miria couldn't help herself from giving a pale smile. The books she read long ago—the books directly responsible for spoiling her once-innocent mind—articulated that in stark clarity: in the infernal heartlands, a boy-toy wife who failed in her duties would be addressed as a he, to remind her of the precarity of her status. But the Hofmeisterin could never allow herself to do that, lest the boy-toy wife think disobedience an escape route.
"Your smirks do you no service," she boomed, "though your silence speaks to a degree of reason. You will take incense and go to the shrine to meditate on how better you can please. And if I hear of you fiddling…"
***
The gardens surrounding the Lady Governor's palace had changed little from their original design. They were a gift, once, delivered by the old king's uncle to his favourite niece, a decade or so before the kingdom of Leshia was dissolved on the negotiation table in the distant Tall Pyres. Expensive marbles and mildly tasteless follies dotted the expansive greenery. So much work went into growing an actual forest among the gently-rolling landscape, into planting exotic flowers and arranging winding, gravel paths, perfectly attuned to the then-latest trends. Miria's father had loved to complain about it, saying that if the king had cared as much about his real subjects as his family cared for its landscaping, then perhaps Leshia would still stand firm. Now the kingdom was no more, and the garden remained, folly-strewn testament to folly itself. Among the wives, the rumour was that the Lady Governor let it remain as it was out of a certain, shameful appreciation for kitsch.
But some changes had been made, if only for formal reasons. Miria took a left turn at an intersection of gravel paths, disappearing into a dense birch grove. With the season still early, leaves were yet to bud, letting the sixth wife glimpse the shrine before she crossed past the tree-line.
Erected out of basalt, squat and unostentatious, it was a fair cry from the grand, bleak basilicas to Want that dominated the skyline of the infernal cities. But these were still the lowlands, and the shrine meant to serve only the Lady Governor's house. She had it hidden from view for that reason, unwilling to wage yet another war with the local temple episcopacy, so violently opposed to everything the cult of Want was meant to represent. Perhaps it was cowardice to not uproot them root-and-branch, as the first wife kept claiming, but the Lady Governor had more taste for stability than proselytism.
Miria folded her parasol and propped it against the metal door before squeezing into the empty inside. Vermillion hellfire overflowed from the brazier in the middle, radiating labile light and inviting heat. As inappropriate as it was, Miria could not help herself but to shift closer to warm her hands by the fire. Tongues of red and pink extended up from the fire-bowl to lick at the tips of her fingers, the infernal essence reaching out to those who would accept it. It was as in the opening lines of that little sacrament book she received upon rendering her marriage vows:
The flames of Want are ever burning, and all-accepting.
Shadows played around her, writhing amidst the bas-relief mass of writhing bodies knotted together into a braid of entwined limbs and orifices. None of those depictions seemed entirely real, and in the unsteady light, none could be clearly read, nor easily described—not even the human-sized sculpture dominating the wall opposite to the door, towering over the metal pillory from which it was to be rendered worship. As the fire shifted and shadows bent, the effigy appeared at once a woman, or a man, vested in silks, or bountifully nude. Sometimes, its horns bent demon-like, but then one could see it as a statue of a plain man. The temple episcopacy warned that the infernal realm worshiped a great devil of all lusts, but they were wrong; the statue stood for no single being, mortal or divine, but for Want itself. That was, perhaps, the reason why when Miria looked at its face, it seemed to be the Lady Governor's.
The hellfire caught on the tip of the incense stick; Miria withdrew it from the brazier, briefly giving in to the child-like wonder of watching a single point of light dance through the dark. Truth be told, she did not exactly understand this cult, nor the reason why demons would solemnly light fires in celebration of their want. But the ritual was easier to perform than faith was to internalize, so she set the incense stick in the holder at the statue's feet, then bowed to it thrice, as was proper. The rest was a matter of waiting. She retreated to the pews, trying to sit down so that neither plug nor corset would poke too much at her insides or her outsides. It took some shifting around and wriggling, but finally she managed to settle into a kind of comfort, head rested on folded hands. Outside, the rain picked up, drumming steadily at the bronze-tiled roof; but the fire kept all cold at bay, and the visages of lust surrounding Miria dissolved into an indistinct movement of light and dark, meaningless, and therefore soothing.
At some point she dozed off into indistinct dreams. Before she got to enjoy them, or let them pass into more familiar nightmares, something sharp poked her into her cheek. She startled like an uncoiling spring, shooting up from the pew and almost slipping on the edge of her own dress.
"Silly girlthing." A familiar voice reached from the side. "This is no place for napping!"
Forgetting not to rub her eyes, Miria turned to where it was coming for; once there, she faced Luna, the first wife, immaculate as always. Of all the Lady Governor's wives, she alone carried demonic blood, only minutely altered by intermarriage with the fey courts of the Lily Isles. To them she owed her horns, spreading antler-like from her temples, their twisting branches ornamented with gold talismans chiming with each motion of her head. Though shorter than her wife, she still towered above petty humans; the tip of Miria's wig could brush Luna's chin; maybe nose, if the sixth wife was to climb to her toes. But where the Lady Governor was sturdy and strong in her build, army muscle braided around a warrior's frame, Luna stood lithe under her layered muslin dress, the pale lilac tint of her skin peering through the fabric like a dream behind a fog. As Miria cleared the daze from her eyes, she watched the needle-point of Luna's tail disappear into the folded cloth.
"I'm sorry," she murmured, unsure what to do with her hands, or her body.
"Don't be," Luna shrugged, passing by her and towards the brazier. She too held a handful of incense sticks in her slender fingers. "This is also no place for judging."
As far as Miria could remember, this was the first time she and Luna had shared a private moment like this. The first wife lived apart from the rest. Oh, of course, they ate at the same table, and showed up to the same functions, but aside from household formalities, the lilac-skinned demoness kept her distance, spending days in her suite of rooms in the palace's upper floors. The third and fourth, in particular, loved to gossip about her; but for Miria, she was even less tangible of a presence than the Lady Governor had turned out to be. No less beautiful, though. An unfortunate tug of desire pulled at her heart, finally managing to divert her thoughts from the bitter morning she had just endured.
"If I had to guess," Luna continued, lighting each incense stick in turn, but not yet placing them in their stands, "Agatha sent you here, didn't she?"
It took Miria a second to remember that Agatha was the Hofmeisterin's secret, forbidden name. As it turned out, the Lady Governor was not the only one to use it. Eagerly, she nodded.
"Typical," the demoness shared the nod, then offered the incense to the statue. Once she was done with the necessary oblations, she turned back to Miria, sliding into a pew in front of her, making sure to sit so that she could face both Want and the sixth wife at the same time. From up close, she carried an ozone fragrance; whether a perfume, or a demoness' natural musk, Miria could not tell.
"She has a good hand for breaking boy-toys in," Luna said, "which is why Asha keeps her. But she's only human, and doesn't really get why we come to stand before Them and make our offerings."
There was a small golden ring threaded through her nostril. It drank the red hellfire's light, glimmering as if itself molten, and Miria could not bring herself to look away from it. Old dreams stirred once more, reminding her how much she would love the same, how much she…
"She probably made a point out of you having to meditate on your failures or something like that, no?"
She smiled as she asked, briefly letting her rows of pointed teeth show; again, Miria only nodded, her imagination caught elsewhere. It was a good thing she had come here, to this warmth and quiet.
"This is what happens when humans get to talk about Want too much," Luna scoffed. "You make a temple out of this place, and some wrathful goddess out of Them, who punishes those who fail to embody the perfect desire. But, I suppose that in this dull country of overcast skies and principled men, sin is easier to believe in than imperfection."
The smile did not fade from Luna's lips as she said that, but nonetheless something seemed to shift in her tone and stance; perhaps it was a flicker in the back of her eyes that hinted at frustration, maybe rage. Or maybe, and Miria preferred to believe this, it was how longing had to sound, it was the shape the yearning took. Ultimately, it didn't matter all that much: the voice alone was sweet enough for the sixth wife to listen to it gladly, whether she could follow the argument's course or not.
"You probably don't understand," Luna sighed. "I wouldn't hold it against you. Ignorance is preferable to obstinance, anyway. Especially in boy-toys."
Once more, her tail peeked from under the dress. It climbed the side of the pew, before delicately wrapping itself around Miria's wrist. The sixth wife inhaled sharply, but made no protest against the touch.
"Do you even know what the purpose of this thing is?" she asked, pointing at the pillory. "I suppose no one was there to teach you."
In truth, Miria did know—or at least knew a variant of the explanation, described in a language of lurid horror by the episcopalian missionaries relaying the revolting tales of what happened in the infernal temples of Want. She'd grown up with those stories; they remained close to her heart. But she kept her mouth shut, and let a twist of Luna's tail guide her up from her seat. Besides, to hear her own voice right now would be just unpleasant—like catching her own reflection at the wrong time.
"It should have been my duty, really," Luna continued, leading Miria between the pews and towards the statue. "Am I not the first wife, and so the shrine-keeper, and so the priestess of Want? But alas, we have gotten far from home and tradition."
A small padlock secured the pillory shut; the key to it hung like a charm from the first wife's antlers, both to ornament, and to mark her duties. Cupping it in hand as if a sacred relic, she unlocked the restraint, then hinged it open. In the back of Miria's head, she quickly reviewed her marriage vows, and the education that preceded them: but no, wives were allowed to be together, if they so desired. This was not wrong, if it was what she was now hoping it was going to be.
"In the old country, there is a custom," her voice dropped a pitch, and in so, grew stronger, "for what should be done the night before a boy-toy is wed and made a wife."
The tail pulled at Miria's wrist, making her turn around and face away from Luna, so that the demoness could reach the tight laces on the sixth wife's back. Miria's mouth moved wordlessly as they were one by one undone; she was ready to complain, to ask so the corset could stay, so that she could remain true to the Hofmeisterin's commands, and so that her waist could remain cinched and shaped.
She made no voice.
"The he that is soon to be made she," Luna explained, folding the corset on a pew, "is stripped of all pretense."
The dress came down next; through the haze of desire Miria could hardly tell if the priestess of Want unlaced it too, or simply tore it from her body. The warmth of the shrine intoxicated, seeping past skin and into flesh; if the sixth wife's body quavered, it was not for cold.
"Is laid bare to see for what he really is."
Distantly, Miria knew she probably ought to say something; not when her useless bra (what was it really holding up? those little jokes?) was piled with the crumpled dress, but rather when Luna's hand slipped underneath the choker on neck and squeezed the clump cartilage hidden beneath. She didn't speak then; neither did she speak when her wig was pulled down. She stayed silent even as her face was being wiped with her dress, smearing the makeup away. Her eyes were looking down now, at another part of her body attesting to the fact that she was enjoying it, so it had to be right.
Right?
"And then, he is made to face Want…"
The plug came out last, popped out one sharp motion; the gasp of pain died on Miria's lips as Luna pulled her now-limp body down into the ready embrace of the pillory. No discomfort awaited her there. Velvet lined the insides of the shackle, so comfortable, so curiously absent of wear. The restraint locked around her wrist and neck, leaving her bent, legs already quaking under the weight of the body, and the desire. The tail unspooled from her arm; instead, she felt the long, lilac fingers crawl towards her mouth and prop it open.
"...and offer himself to it wholesale."
A metal ring came between her teeth, forcing the jaw open as a strap secured the device behind her neck. Drool began to pool in the bottom of her mouth almost instantly, and dripped out in long strings after. Ahead of her, the grand statue stood, and shifted, and danced between forms and shapes. Even closing her eyes did not take the sight away. Maybe the day wasn't going to be so bad after all. Her groin burned.
"Anyone can then use him," the keeper of this shrine carried on preaching, now hidden somewhere outside of Miria's restrained field of view. "They make an offering to the shrine…"
A small golden thaler thunked to the basalt floor, showing the mounted portrait of Her Infernal Majesty's atop her draconic steed.
"...and then do with the flesh as they please."
A sharp wheezing sound was all the warning Miria got before a clawed hand raked her across her buttocks. She screamed out in pain and surprise, and something else, deeper still. Her legs buckled, so Luna had to pull her up by hand before the next blow. Because there was a next blow coming.
"Do you know why?" the priestess of Want repeated her favourite pedagogical question.
Even if she'd wanted to speak, Miria could only moan, and sink deeper into the embrace of the statue ahead of her, her face now both the Lady Governor's and Luna's. She was about to start crying, and welcomed that—even as she also wanted so much for the demoness behind her to stop striking, and instead…
"First and foremost," Luna said, her voice now a far-away rolling sea, "so that they never forget what they really are. What they exist to be."
The sixth wife braced herself for more strikes; and there was one or two, but nowhere near as fierce. They stung more for how tender the flesh already was, rather than for their force.
"But alas, this is the old country's custom. Not fit for the lowlands, and for the lowlanders. The Lady Governor said so, and it is our duty, as her wives, to treat it as law. A shame, isn't it? Wouldn't you want to be given to a whole basilica, hm?"
That she could not scream an audible yes! and was only allowed to groan some ugly half-sound in the shape of that word made her burn, and want. The statue's shadow-hands extended to embrace her and accept her into the fold.
"Well then, have a taste!"
There was a rustle of muslin, and then the sound of cloven feet shifting closer, of warm flesh pressing against her own exposed skin. Miria inhaled and exhaled, excited and terrified, waiting to be made open by force and to scream—
The sound was of a hand slipping around something wet; it went on for a few ragged breaths, and then a spurt of hot liquid sprinkled over Miria's bare back. She whimpered in protest; Luna wiped her sticky hand on the girl's thigh, and took a step back.
"This is why I like you," the priestess of Want laughed. "You know what you are, and make no attempt to pass yourself as anything but that."
This much was true, without a doubt. Miria tried to imagine how she looked now, a half-formed boy-wife body, dripping from mouth and shallow cuts, and from her own dick, and from Luna's filth slowly making its way to the side of the chest to also follow to the basalt floor. The image was revolting, and she was glad for it, even as she had to stifle a sob.
"If only the others were the same…" the demoness whispered, words no longer directed at the sixth wife. "But you must be right, Asha, this is a country of temples, not shrines."
As if to underscore her point, a distant booming of bells broke through the silence of the shrine, announcing a moment of high prayer in the many holy houses of the city below the hill. Absurdly, Miria wondered if her parents were in one, right now, asking the many faces of the Holy for grace and forgiveness for their son who sins for their sake. Maybe this was why the tolling was so intense and so loud today; maybe the enormity of the boy's sacrifice moved the city's thousand bells to an unison wail.
"As for you," Luna picked up after a quiet moment, "you do as Agatha asked, and meditate on want. I'll pick you up later."
Before the full ramification of that statement could make its way through Miria's clouded mind, the sound of the steel door shutting announced that Luna was not staying to listen to any further complaints.
In a way, it was everything the sixth wife could have asked for on this day. She sagged, dropping into a kneeling position, and stopped holding the unfulfilled sobs back.
"And where do you think you're going, young lady?"
The Hofmeisterin crossed into Miria's path before the door to the Lady Governor's study even managed to shut. In spite of the fact that it was her duty to oversee all the dozens of servants who provided for the household, she'd apparently made time to lurk in wait at her mistress' doorstep. Miria shot her a dour look, but ground to a halt.
"I have been dismissed," she replied, trying to affect a steady voice, while still shifting into the higher pitch that the Hofmeisterin demanded. "I was going to find Agnes, and then return to my room."
The expression on the old woman's face turned from stern to severe—expectedly so. She shook her head in open disapproval, yet again reminding Miria of how it seemed to make no difference whether she was being honest or not. The presumption was always the same: the duplicitous lowlander, looking to shirk from her wifely duties.
"And why were you intending on seeking Agnes?" she asked, the set-up blatantly obvious in the question.
Miria fixed her eyes on a yellowed oil painting visible above and past the Hofmeisterin's shoulder. Some baby-faced aristocrat of the old kingdom sat pensive in it, focusing on the inevitable passing of the golden age. As with most decorations that the Lady Governor inherited after the previous owners of the palace, it buckled under the weight of overaffected, sentimental detail. The mannerist style damned the entire work to remain little more than a testament to history's bad taste.
"To return the plug to her?" she tried an answer that felt least likely to confirm prior biases. "For cleaning."
"Hm. Absolutely not."
On any other day—well, on most other days, at least—this response, spat at her with lightly disdainful fury, would likely make Miria squirm with excitement. She would think of being forced to wear that metal bulb up her ass as she hid in her own boy-toy wife's bedroom, one hand gripping the medicine-shrunk dick, the other pushing on the plug to feel it press against the innermost parts of her pleasure. Moments like these were why she offered herself for marriage, were they not? Why else would she accept it if not for the want of this heady mix of lust, shame, and subservience? But today, she was just tired and sore, and wanted that damn lump out of her, so that she could eat a normal meal, take a normal shit, and then lock herself in her room and cry a little bit into a trusted comfort pillow.
"That the Lady Governor dismissed you does not liberate you from the duty to prepare your body for servicing her, should she ever…"
Miria's lips twitched at the mention of that ever. A bitter smile flashed through her face, before she suppressed it lest the Hofmeisterin notice. Fortunately, she was too caught up in her own tirade to pay sufficient attention.
"...decide to make use out of you. At that point, you need to be able to receive the fullness of her attention, without a whimper of a complaint! This is the sole duty you have in this house, the core of your vows, and you will not neglect it, even if the Lady Governor is otherwise occupied. Are we understood?"
"Yes, Hofmeisterin."
"You will stay as you are until dinner," the old servant continued, spitting out each word like a whip-strike, "and until then, do you know what you will be doing?"
Miria did not know, although she could suspect. She peeled her eyes away from that terrible painting to meet the Hofmeisterin's merciless stare. The joke was, of course, that technically, she was not supposed to take orders here; even as a sixth-wife, and a boy-toy one at that, she still stood above servants in the hierarchy of this household. But the Hofmeisterin, though pure human, was of the infernal lands, five decades of service impressing the wrinkled, taut face with an authority that a lowlander girlthing would not be allowed to gainsay. Assuming, that is, she would even want to: on any other day, it would be exactly the kind of a subjugation she not-so-secretly longed for. But today hurt differently.
"Remind me," the Hofmeisterin continued, "what should a boy-toy wife do, if she has failed to satisfy her wife?"
The pronouns, so clearly uttered, were a barb, meant to cut, to remind the lowlander of what she was being made to be. This time, however, even Miria couldn't help herself from giving a pale smile. The books she read long ago—the books directly responsible for spoiling her once-innocent mind—articulated that in stark clarity: in the infernal heartlands, a boy-toy wife who failed in her duties would be addressed as a he, to remind her of the precarity of her status. But the Hofmeisterin could never allow herself to do that, lest the boy-toy wife think disobedience an escape route.
"Your smirks do you no service," she boomed, "though your silence speaks to a degree of reason. You will take incense and go to the shrine to meditate on how better you can please. And if I hear of you fiddling…"
***
The gardens surrounding the Lady Governor's palace had changed little from their original design. They were a gift, once, delivered by the old king's uncle to his favourite niece, a decade or so before the kingdom of Leshia was dissolved on the negotiation table in the distant Tall Pyres. Expensive marbles and mildly tasteless follies dotted the expansive greenery. So much work went into growing an actual forest among the gently-rolling landscape, into planting exotic flowers and arranging winding, gravel paths, perfectly attuned to the then-latest trends. Miria's father had loved to complain about it, saying that if the king had cared as much about his real subjects as his family cared for its landscaping, then perhaps Leshia would still stand firm. Now the kingdom was no more, and the garden remained, folly-strewn testament to folly itself. Among the wives, the rumour was that the Lady Governor let it remain as it was out of a certain, shameful appreciation for kitsch.
But some changes had been made, if only for formal reasons. Miria took a left turn at an intersection of gravel paths, disappearing into a dense birch grove. With the season still early, leaves were yet to bud, letting the sixth wife glimpse the shrine before she crossed past the tree-line.
Erected out of basalt, squat and unostentatious, it was a fair cry from the grand, bleak basilicas to Want that dominated the skyline of the infernal cities. But these were still the lowlands, and the shrine meant to serve only the Lady Governor's house. She had it hidden from view for that reason, unwilling to wage yet another war with the local temple episcopacy, so violently opposed to everything the cult of Want was meant to represent. Perhaps it was cowardice to not uproot them root-and-branch, as the first wife kept claiming, but the Lady Governor had more taste for stability than proselytism.
Miria folded her parasol and propped it against the metal door before squeezing into the empty inside. Vermillion hellfire overflowed from the brazier in the middle, radiating labile light and inviting heat. As inappropriate as it was, Miria could not help herself but to shift closer to warm her hands by the fire. Tongues of red and pink extended up from the fire-bowl to lick at the tips of her fingers, the infernal essence reaching out to those who would accept it. It was as in the opening lines of that little sacrament book she received upon rendering her marriage vows:
The flames of Want are ever burning, and all-accepting.
Shadows played around her, writhing amidst the bas-relief mass of writhing bodies knotted together into a braid of entwined limbs and orifices. None of those depictions seemed entirely real, and in the unsteady light, none could be clearly read, nor easily described—not even the human-sized sculpture dominating the wall opposite to the door, towering over the metal pillory from which it was to be rendered worship. As the fire shifted and shadows bent, the effigy appeared at once a woman, or a man, vested in silks, or bountifully nude. Sometimes, its horns bent demon-like, but then one could see it as a statue of a plain man. The temple episcopacy warned that the infernal realm worshiped a great devil of all lusts, but they were wrong; the statue stood for no single being, mortal or divine, but for Want itself. That was, perhaps, the reason why when Miria looked at its face, it seemed to be the Lady Governor's.
The hellfire caught on the tip of the incense stick; Miria withdrew it from the brazier, briefly giving in to the child-like wonder of watching a single point of light dance through the dark. Truth be told, she did not exactly understand this cult, nor the reason why demons would solemnly light fires in celebration of their want. But the ritual was easier to perform than faith was to internalize, so she set the incense stick in the holder at the statue's feet, then bowed to it thrice, as was proper. The rest was a matter of waiting. She retreated to the pews, trying to sit down so that neither plug nor corset would poke too much at her insides or her outsides. It took some shifting around and wriggling, but finally she managed to settle into a kind of comfort, head rested on folded hands. Outside, the rain picked up, drumming steadily at the bronze-tiled roof; but the fire kept all cold at bay, and the visages of lust surrounding Miria dissolved into an indistinct movement of light and dark, meaningless, and therefore soothing.
At some point she dozed off into indistinct dreams. Before she got to enjoy them, or let them pass into more familiar nightmares, something sharp poked her into her cheek. She startled like an uncoiling spring, shooting up from the pew and almost slipping on the edge of her own dress.
"Silly girlthing." A familiar voice reached from the side. "This is no place for napping!"
Forgetting not to rub her eyes, Miria turned to where it was coming for; once there, she faced Luna, the first wife, immaculate as always. Of all the Lady Governor's wives, she alone carried demonic blood, only minutely altered by intermarriage with the fey courts of the Lily Isles. To them she owed her horns, spreading antler-like from her temples, their twisting branches ornamented with gold talismans chiming with each motion of her head. Though shorter than her wife, she still towered above petty humans; the tip of Miria's wig could brush Luna's chin; maybe nose, if the sixth wife was to climb to her toes. But where the Lady Governor was sturdy and strong in her build, army muscle braided around a warrior's frame, Luna stood lithe under her layered muslin dress, the pale lilac tint of her skin peering through the fabric like a dream behind a fog. As Miria cleared the daze from her eyes, she watched the needle-point of Luna's tail disappear into the folded cloth.
"I'm sorry," she murmured, unsure what to do with her hands, or her body.
"Don't be," Luna shrugged, passing by her and towards the brazier. She too held a handful of incense sticks in her slender fingers. "This is also no place for judging."
As far as Miria could remember, this was the first time she and Luna had shared a private moment like this. The first wife lived apart from the rest. Oh, of course, they ate at the same table, and showed up to the same functions, but aside from household formalities, the lilac-skinned demoness kept her distance, spending days in her suite of rooms in the palace's upper floors. The third and fourth, in particular, loved to gossip about her; but for Miria, she was even less tangible of a presence than the Lady Governor had turned out to be. No less beautiful, though. An unfortunate tug of desire pulled at her heart, finally managing to divert her thoughts from the bitter morning she had just endured.
"If I had to guess," Luna continued, lighting each incense stick in turn, but not yet placing them in their stands, "Agatha sent you here, didn't she?"
It took Miria a second to remember that Agatha was the Hofmeisterin's secret, forbidden name. As it turned out, the Lady Governor was not the only one to use it. Eagerly, she nodded.
"Typical," the demoness shared the nod, then offered the incense to the statue. Once she was done with the necessary oblations, she turned back to Miria, sliding into a pew in front of her, making sure to sit so that she could face both Want and the sixth wife at the same time. From up close, she carried an ozone fragrance; whether a perfume, or a demoness' natural musk, Miria could not tell.
"She has a good hand for breaking boy-toys in," Luna said, "which is why Asha keeps her. But she's only human, and doesn't really get why we come to stand before Them and make our offerings."
There was a small golden ring threaded through her nostril. It drank the red hellfire's light, glimmering as if itself molten, and Miria could not bring herself to look away from it. Old dreams stirred once more, reminding her how much she would love the same, how much she…
"She probably made a point out of you having to meditate on your failures or something like that, no?"
She smiled as she asked, briefly letting her rows of pointed teeth show; again, Miria only nodded, her imagination caught elsewhere. It was a good thing she had come here, to this warmth and quiet.
"This is what happens when humans get to talk about Want too much," Luna scoffed. "You make a temple out of this place, and some wrathful goddess out of Them, who punishes those who fail to embody the perfect desire. But, I suppose that in this dull country of overcast skies and principled men, sin is easier to believe in than imperfection."
The smile did not fade from Luna's lips as she said that, but nonetheless something seemed to shift in her tone and stance; perhaps it was a flicker in the back of her eyes that hinted at frustration, maybe rage. Or maybe, and Miria preferred to believe this, it was how longing had to sound, it was the shape the yearning took. Ultimately, it didn't matter all that much: the voice alone was sweet enough for the sixth wife to listen to it gladly, whether she could follow the argument's course or not.
"You probably don't understand," Luna sighed. "I wouldn't hold it against you. Ignorance is preferable to obstinance, anyway. Especially in boy-toys."
Once more, her tail peeked from under the dress. It climbed the side of the pew, before delicately wrapping itself around Miria's wrist. The sixth wife inhaled sharply, but made no protest against the touch.
"Do you even know what the purpose of this thing is?" she asked, pointing at the pillory. "I suppose no one was there to teach you."
In truth, Miria did know—or at least knew a variant of the explanation, described in a language of lurid horror by the episcopalian missionaries relaying the revolting tales of what happened in the infernal temples of Want. She'd grown up with those stories; they remained close to her heart. But she kept her mouth shut, and let a twist of Luna's tail guide her up from her seat. Besides, to hear her own voice right now would be just unpleasant—like catching her own reflection at the wrong time.
"It should have been my duty, really," Luna continued, leading Miria between the pews and towards the statue. "Am I not the first wife, and so the shrine-keeper, and so the priestess of Want? But alas, we have gotten far from home and tradition."
A small padlock secured the pillory shut; the key to it hung like a charm from the first wife's antlers, both to ornament, and to mark her duties. Cupping it in hand as if a sacred relic, she unlocked the restraint, then hinged it open. In the back of Miria's head, she quickly reviewed her marriage vows, and the education that preceded them: but no, wives were allowed to be together, if they so desired. This was not wrong, if it was what she was now hoping it was going to be.
"In the old country, there is a custom," her voice dropped a pitch, and in so, grew stronger, "for what should be done the night before a boy-toy is wed and made a wife."
The tail pulled at Miria's wrist, making her turn around and face away from Luna, so that the demoness could reach the tight laces on the sixth wife's back. Miria's mouth moved wordlessly as they were one by one undone; she was ready to complain, to ask so the corset could stay, so that she could remain true to the Hofmeisterin's commands, and so that her waist could remain cinched and shaped.
She made no voice.
"The he that is soon to be made she," Luna explained, folding the corset on a pew, "is stripped of all pretense."
The dress came down next; through the haze of desire Miria could hardly tell if the priestess of Want unlaced it too, or simply tore it from her body. The warmth of the shrine intoxicated, seeping past skin and into flesh; if the sixth wife's body quavered, it was not for cold.
"Is laid bare to see for what he really is."
Distantly, Miria knew she probably ought to say something; not when her useless bra (what was it really holding up? those little jokes?) was piled with the crumpled dress, but rather when Luna's hand slipped underneath the choker on neck and squeezed the clump cartilage hidden beneath. She didn't speak then; neither did she speak when her wig was pulled down. She stayed silent even as her face was being wiped with her dress, smearing the makeup away. Her eyes were looking down now, at another part of her body attesting to the fact that she was enjoying it, so it had to be right.
Right?
"And then, he is made to face Want…"
The plug came out last, popped out one sharp motion; the gasp of pain died on Miria's lips as Luna pulled her now-limp body down into the ready embrace of the pillory. No discomfort awaited her there. Velvet lined the insides of the shackle, so comfortable, so curiously absent of wear. The restraint locked around her wrist and neck, leaving her bent, legs already quaking under the weight of the body, and the desire. The tail unspooled from her arm; instead, she felt the long, lilac fingers crawl towards her mouth and prop it open.
"...and offer himself to it wholesale."
A metal ring came between her teeth, forcing the jaw open as a strap secured the device behind her neck. Drool began to pool in the bottom of her mouth almost instantly, and dripped out in long strings after. Ahead of her, the grand statue stood, and shifted, and danced between forms and shapes. Even closing her eyes did not take the sight away. Maybe the day wasn't going to be so bad after all. Her groin burned.
"Anyone can then use him," the keeper of this shrine carried on preaching, now hidden somewhere outside of Miria's restrained field of view. "They make an offering to the shrine…"
A small golden thaler thunked to the basalt floor, showing the mounted portrait of Her Infernal Majesty's atop her draconic steed.
"...and then do with the flesh as they please."
A sharp wheezing sound was all the warning Miria got before a clawed hand raked her across her buttocks. She screamed out in pain and surprise, and something else, deeper still. Her legs buckled, so Luna had to pull her up by hand before the next blow. Because there was a next blow coming.
"Do you know why?" the priestess of Want repeated her favourite pedagogical question.
Even if she'd wanted to speak, Miria could only moan, and sink deeper into the embrace of the statue ahead of her, her face now both the Lady Governor's and Luna's. She was about to start crying, and welcomed that—even as she also wanted so much for the demoness behind her to stop striking, and instead…
"First and foremost," Luna said, her voice now a far-away rolling sea, "so that they never forget what they really are. What they exist to be."
The sixth wife braced herself for more strikes; and there was one or two, but nowhere near as fierce. They stung more for how tender the flesh already was, rather than for their force.
"But alas, this is the old country's custom. Not fit for the lowlands, and for the lowlanders. The Lady Governor said so, and it is our duty, as her wives, to treat it as law. A shame, isn't it? Wouldn't you want to be given to a whole basilica, hm?"
That she could not scream an audible yes! and was only allowed to groan some ugly half-sound in the shape of that word made her burn, and want. The statue's shadow-hands extended to embrace her and accept her into the fold.
"Well then, have a taste!"
There was a rustle of muslin, and then the sound of cloven feet shifting closer, of warm flesh pressing against her own exposed skin. Miria inhaled and exhaled, excited and terrified, waiting to be made open by force and to scream—
The sound was of a hand slipping around something wet; it went on for a few ragged breaths, and then a spurt of hot liquid sprinkled over Miria's bare back. She whimpered in protest; Luna wiped her sticky hand on the girl's thigh, and took a step back.
"This is why I like you," the priestess of Want laughed. "You know what you are, and make no attempt to pass yourself as anything but that."
This much was true, without a doubt. Miria tried to imagine how she looked now, a half-formed boy-wife body, dripping from mouth and shallow cuts, and from her own dick, and from Luna's filth slowly making its way to the side of the chest to also follow to the basalt floor. The image was revolting, and she was glad for it, even as she had to stifle a sob.
"If only the others were the same…" the demoness whispered, words no longer directed at the sixth wife. "But you must be right, Asha, this is a country of temples, not shrines."
As if to underscore her point, a distant booming of bells broke through the silence of the shrine, announcing a moment of high prayer in the many holy houses of the city below the hill. Absurdly, Miria wondered if her parents were in one, right now, asking the many faces of the Holy for grace and forgiveness for their son who sins for their sake. Maybe this was why the tolling was so intense and so loud today; maybe the enormity of the boy's sacrifice moved the city's thousand bells to an unison wail.
"As for you," Luna picked up after a quiet moment, "you do as Agatha asked, and meditate on want. I'll pick you up later."
Before the full ramification of that statement could make its way through Miria's clouded mind, the sound of the steel door shutting announced that Luna was not staying to listen to any further complaints.
In a way, it was everything the sixth wife could have asked for on this day. She sagged, dropping into a kneeling position, and stopped holding the unfulfilled sobs back.
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- Pronouns
- She/Her
The cultural gaps between the Holfmeisterin (who is awful butt doesn't get it) and Luna (who sees an incredibly dysphoric trans girl and is like "ah yes, you have an accurate self-image") and the reader who all bring very different concepts of gender roles to things lands really hard.
Alas hot toppy deer wife is kinda an idiot
Alas hot toppy deer wife is kinda an idiot
Chapter Two of Miria and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day continues to deliver!
This is sort of like reading about experiments at CERN, except instead of finding regimes of particle physics where supersymmetry may supercede the standard model, it's about how simultaneously disappointed and erotically humiliated we can make one depressed trans girl. Science marches on!
Also from Chapter One:
Asha beginning to realise:
This is sort of like reading about experiments at CERN, except instead of finding regimes of particle physics where supersymmetry may supercede the standard model, it's about how simultaneously disappointed and erotically humiliated we can make one depressed trans girl. Science marches on!
Also from Chapter One:
Asha beginning to realise:
Gargulec
impact!
- Location
- a garden
Wouldn't know why, I have never before written a story about a deeply dysphoric trans girl managing her gender by giving herself into an institution which validates her as a byproduct of objectifying her, and I have never before written a story about social and cultural tensions building up to a crescendo of violence that can only be averted through the sublime act of becoming a good bottom. I am, as you see, a creative.
Really I think that this is a story about good risk-aware and consensual practices in kink.
It's not good practice to do the Austro-Hungarian Empire with your partner unless you've both had a conversation about limits and established a safe word. The Dual Monarchy is quite a hardcore kink and it's easy to get hurt for newbies who don't know what they're doing.
It's not good practice to do the Austro-Hungarian Empire with your partner unless you've both had a conversation about limits and established a safe word. The Dual Monarchy is quite a hardcore kink and it's easy to get hurt for newbies who don't know what they're doing.
Half Moon
In the end, there is no end.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I have read enough of your stories to be able to recognize the themes, yes. This one has those vibes, but it also has different, oddly familar vibes from somewhere else.
The Slaaneshi Rituals of House Harkonnen, by A.N. Roquelaure.
Looks to be some interestingly fucked up scenario(s). Still getting the decadent aristo vibe; can't help but wonder what trouble this crew of degenerates will get into. Although it's probably throwing off the eldritch vibes that I keep thinking of the demons as Helltaker characters.
Looks to be some interestingly fucked up scenario(s). Still getting the decadent aristo vibe; can't help but wonder what trouble this crew of degenerates will get into. Although it's probably throwing off the eldritch vibes that I keep thinking of the demons as Helltaker characters.
- Location
- Somewhere!
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I think the demons are incase characters, but helltaker isn't that different really.
Gargulec
impact!
- Location
- a garden
I would be interested to hear what those vibes are. I am doing this thing a lot of over-eager writers are doing, that is low-key pastiching a narrative I am not super familiar with (Regency-era romance), or more broadly, just stealing a bunch the aesthetic without really following the themes and ideas that make it possible. Also, referring to this as Regency-era indirectly ruins the meme above, but what can you do. Once a k.u.k., always a k.u.k.
The funny thing is that I have pretty much completely forgotten about either Helltaker, or Incase while writing this, although clearly Incase aesthetic is a good fit here. Then again, I feel like mildly 19th century aristocratic settings are one of the most intuitively available pornographic aesthetics out there? So a lot of it may just as well be convergent evolution and uncreative aping of existing conventions for the ease of writing.
- Location
- Wörms, the half continent
I don't really know what to say about this, beyond the fact it really does feel resonant with some parts of me.
It's good! Quite curious to see how it develops - and what this violent crime mentioned in the summary will be.
It's good! Quite curious to see how it develops - and what this violent crime mentioned in the summary will be.
Hey, there's nothing saying that Transleithanians and Cisleithanians can't get along. Just gotta watch your Magyarization.
Chapter Three: In Which Something Dear is Lost
Gargulec
impact!
- Location
- a garden
Chapter Three: In Which Something Dear is Lost
Not long after the wedding night, when Miria had first started taking the wife-medicine, she'd been pulled aside by Mażin, the third wife. Then, over a few glasses of sickeningly sweet coffee liqueur, the older women had quickly explained to the newly-wed what effects the medicine would have. At first, it had been mostly a cordial attempt to dispel some common, lowland superstitions, but it had not taken Mażin long to notice that the sixth wife needed no such reassurances. Instead, Miria showed disappointment when Mażin informed her that many of the changes would not be the instantaneous transformation that lowland broadsheets warned against, but rather be subtle at first, and take long to fully manifest. And so what was meant to be a consolation quickly turned into more matter-of-fact advice: warnings that Miria's muscles would weaken, that she would get strange cravings and new kinds of morning sickness, and that she should probably accept the fact that some days, she was going to find herself crying for no good reason at all.
Today was one such day. The boy-toy wife stood bent and stuck in a pillory, unable to look away from the statue of Want filling her vision. Blood, drool, and someone else's ejaculate dripped from the sides of her body, now joined by her tears.
Miria could not entirely explain why she was also sobbing. Was she unhappy? Unfulfilled, perhaps. Or just plain unfilled—she'd wanted Luna to drive into her, to make her squeal and moan like when the Lady Governor took her in possession on the night of their marriage. But the frustration did not hurt; it knotted her insides and made her try to rub her thighs together around her nethers, so warm and flushed. There was nothing she could do that could bring her past the peak and relieve the desire, and to realize how much this pleased her made her wince in shame and bite down on the gag, which only made it feel better.
When she closed her eyes, she imagined a hydra of hands reaching from the braided wall of limbs that ringed the shrine. They captured her, pried her open, and made such use of her—and each left a coin in gratitude, until Miria's feet sank into gold. Far away, the city's bells sang praise of this sacrifice.
Were the tears streaming down her cheeks joy, then? She did as she was told, and let the great, formless want fill her thoughts. The heat of the shrine, the play of shadows, desperate, helpless arousal all invited the same thing: surrender. This had to be the lesson Luna left her to learn, and she was so very grateful for the shrine-keeper's wicked pedagogy.
Metal scraped behind her; a cold gust blew as the door opened. For a split second, Miria wished for nothing but to see another piece of gold roll next to the lonesome thaler. Someone would come and grip her by her hips, no matter how unfeminine, and then make use of them as if of a wife. Her mouth tensed around the metal ring, face burning scarlet with eager shame.
But it was not to be.
"Young lady?"
Miria recognized the voice—it was Mariś, one of her chamber-maids. Nervous footsteps clacked on the basalt floor, way outside her field of vision; she tried to twist her head to see the woman approach, and got only to look at a hand nervously approach the padlock keeping the pillory shut, then withdraw. But the boy-toy wife did not need more to feel the weight of someone's gaze settle on the drying pattern sprayed over the small of her back. Shame curdled into sheer humiliation; without meaning to, Miria strained against her bonds; her reward was the sound of a woman stepping away.
"Uh," Mariś hitched audibly. "The Hofmeisterin, uh—says you have to—I'm so sorry! I didn't meant to—The Hofmeisterin says you need to return to the palace immediately!"
What rang in the maid's voice was neither desire, nor admiration, but sharp embarrassment. A tension lifted off Miria's back as the illicit stare moved aside; Mariś was looking away, trying desperately not to see the sorry display in front of her. Of course. What else could the sixth wife have expected?
"Ah," she tried to speak through the gag, "han't fhee myhelf."
"Young lady?" the maid asked, clearly and desperately wishing to be anywhere else but here.
"Ah!" Miria chewed on the metal ring, "Han't! Fhee! Myhelf!"
"I'll get the Hofmeisterin!" Mariś cried out in panic, and bolted, running away fast enough to forget to close the door behind her.
The warnings that the third wife had delivered to Miria, punctuated by quick sips of a tar-like drink, went into great detail. She did not limit herself to letting Miria know that she should be ready for unexpected tears. Mażin had made sure that the newly-wed, newly-wifed girl was also aware of the fact that the medicine would sometimes also lead to times when everything abruptly started tasting of shit.
The cold weather seeped past the ajar door, pushing past the hellfire's heat and setting Miria to a shiver. Moments ago, she'd fancied herself everyone's desire, and now was forced to reckon with what really stood bound before the effigy of Want: an unfinished, patsy body, stripped of everything that could make it passable. If she had been laid bare it was not to be admired, but rather so that she would never forget what anyone with a pair of eyes could see her for. Those thoughts were, of course, nothing but another hysteric bout, a spasm of a body slowly morphing into a new shape: but knowing was a small reprieve at best. Besides, she was no longer crying, and quite clear-eyed about the matter.
The banging of rushed steps snapped her out of the spiraling train of thought. Before she could realize what was happening, the pillory's lock clicked open. Careful hands wrapped a thick blanket around her chest, and helped her up, the light and dark staging a brief dance before her eyes. Through a nauseating vertigo, the sixth wife glimpsed Mariś, trying to be tender, and the towering lilac shape of Luna. Without thinking, she reached out, trying to come into an embrace; she desperately longed to be reassured in the demoness' warmth.
"Not now," the priestess of Want pushed her back, voice vibrating a wire about to snap.
Mira stumbled; Mariś caught her under the arms, then quickly brought up a handkerchief to wipe drool from her lips. The sixth wife blinked, feeling another tremble go through her. Luna was already disappearing in the door, taking great, unfeminine steps. The bells of the city had not stopped ringing.
"I—" Mariś muttered, guiding Miria down onto a pew, "I brought you fresh clothes. It's—"
Her voice faded briefly; the young woman let herself be vested, limp in the maid's experienced hands. Consciousness, in the full sense of the word, was slow to return.
"The Hofmeisterin?" she finally managed to ask.
Mariś did not look up from the floor, fingers struggling with the laces on the freshly-lacquered shoes fitted to the sixth wife's oversized feet.
"Tending to matters," the maid replied, quivering ever so slightly. "She said, only the shrine-keeper can touch…"
She threw an uneasy glance at the restraint, trying not to look at the statue beneath. Miria felt bad for the girl. The Lady Governor made a point of taking lowlanders into service, and not interfering with their worship of the Holy. But they rarely ever returned that grace and tried to see what the infernals brought as anything but filth and defilement. Miria thought back to her brother, pounding the table back home, because he believed that no amount of occupier's favour could justify sacrificing his brother to the monstrous Want. She thought of how she'd looked away then, so that he would not have to see into her eyes, and realize how the marriage was nothing how he had thought it like.
The truth, of course, would have only made it worse.
"Let me wash your face."
With a damp cloth, Mariś wiped away the last of makeup from Miria. And then they were done; the sixth wife, in a fresh white dress, and the shrine in disarray. There was no reason to torture the maid by forcing her to stay here any longer; and besides, there was a clear urgency to whatever matter had made the Hofmeisterin summon her so far ahead of the schedule.
Or maybe it was not urgency, but something far worse. Each step Miria took through the rainy afternoon, towards the pillared front of the Lady Governor's palace, seemed to suggest as much. The place was out of joint. An unfamiliar cart, covered in stained canvas, stood parked near the front door. Servants rushed through spring mud, heedless of the dirt staining the once-spotless white of their liveries. They were not alone; house soldiers, in their blood-red jackets, flocked to the courtyard, rifles at the ready.
"What's going on?" Miria asked the maid, feeling a terrible, shapeless worry swell in her stomach.
Mariś waved her shoulders in helpless confusion. But what the girl did not know, other things betrayed. They entered into the palace's great hall, and passed by its previous owners' pride: a great, free-standing clock, ornamented with gold leaf and ivory. Now, a pair of servants worked to stop it. One held the pendulum still, the other set the hour to a motionless twelve. White splashed the walls; white veils and white blindfolds to install over the eyes of the old aristocrats staring from countless portraits. The time was to be stilled, and the eyes of the dead turned away from the living. The furious tolling of hundreds of bells no longer penetrated past the thick walls, but Miria knew they had not stopped. Though the wailing was yet to start, it was only a matter of time. Death had come to her wife's home. The question remained: for whom? In its wake, there was fear.
Please, don't let it be my wife.
They met the Hofmeisterin on the stairs up. The old servant caught a glimpse of Miria and approached, for once without a reproach. There were no comments about Miria's gait, and not even a demand that she should be ashamed of the way her beard shadow peered from under the removed poudres. In fact, the Hofmeisterin herself seemed ashamed, constantly picking at the sides of her black dress, standing out like an ink-spill against the backdrop of mourning white. Before she spoke, her hands opened and closed a few times, struggling to catch a semblance of collected calm.
"Young lady. The Lady Governor is in the Star Chamber," she announced finally, grief drowning everything else her voice might have carried. "Make haste."
Her mouth moved as if to add something. Miria pushed past her, and to the stairs, almost tripping over her feet, only holding herself up by a hand clutching the railing. Each half-run, half-rush carried her two, maybe three steps up, until she found herself in the wide hall that had once served as an audience room for generations of magnates. Now, white cloth blinded the gallery of their portraits so that they would not look at the bier erected in the center. Its sight drew a stifled sigh of relief from Miria. A shape of a body unmistakably peered from under the snow-white shroud—but of a body too small to be Asha. The Star Chamber waited beyond; she rushed forward. If not the Lady Governor, then who?
Luna, the first? Visza, the second? Mażin, the third? Czewa, the fourth? Stava, the fifth?
The ceiling turned blue and studded with gold. The scent of incense filled the Star Chamber, mixed into the overpowering warmth of hellfire cupped in Luna's hand. The first wife sat alone at the side, at some distance from the short, stout Mażin, appearing even smaller for the oversized saber she clutched in her hands. To see her perform the role of the third, of the arms-bearer, was rare, and an awful omen for what was to come. Czewa and Stava stood not far, hands and fingers wound tightly together. In mourning whites, they seemed older than usual, their faces icons of rough-hewn handsomeness, as if taken from the stained-glass portraits of episcopal holy men.
A few eyes turned at Miria's entrance, but all the wives remained focused on the demonic women in the center of them—the only one wearing not the white of lamentation, but the red of war. Silver medals glinted from the Lady Governor's chest, her colonel's uniform giving a new sharpness to her silhouette. She acknowledged her sixth wife's entrance with a tip of her head, and motion at the third.
In a slow, careful motion, Mażin came closer, and knelt before her wife, offering the sword and the scabbard up. In that moment, watching the Lady Governor's hand close around the hilt, Miria realized that her wife came not to grieve, but to avenge.
"They," she announced, "murdered Visza."
***
It would take Miria hours and days to patch together—from hushed gossip, aborted half-statements, and overheard shreds of conversation—an explanation of what had happened, even if only an incomplete one. There were certain facts, however, that she could establish beyond dispute.
On the day of her killing, Visza attended a service in the Overwhelming Grace. It was a temple her great-grandfather had founded, during the last flowering of the late kingdom of Leshia. To sit in its front pews, among the aristocrats of the old realm, was therefore more than a privilege for her: it was her birthright. As always, she had a seat reserved to the left of the altar, among women. It was a minor holy day, and the temple was packed, especially since a famous itinerant preacher was visiting to address the congregation. According to ritual order, Bużan, the city's old episcopal, administered the first rites, and yielded the pulpit when it was time for the sermon.
The visiting preacher—a man by the name of Striczyk, distantly related to the cadet branch of one of the Leshian royal houses—based his sermon on the popular parable: that of two medicines. He followed its beats faithfully, telling of a physician who had two powerful medicines, one to cure plague, and one to cure cholera. Unfortunately, his foolish wife assumed that if the medicines were each strong on their own, then they would become even stronger when mixed. But they turned into a deadly poison, and brought great misery to people instead.
Striczyk needed not to explain much further, for the point had to be clear to all in attendance. Morbidly, Miria could not help but to wonder what Visza had made out of it; how she had felt as the eyes of holy men turned to her, and the beautiful dress she wore, a gift from the Lady Governor's own hands.
As ever, when the sermon finished, so came the time to administer blessings. Visza had put herself in line with other women, waiting patiently for the old episcopal to lay his hands on her. It was at that point when some man shouted—from the back pews, from among the young noble sons—a question. Allegedly, he wore the colours of the old kingdom on him, and a brooch with the Leshian griffon. "Who," he asked, "is trying to poison us?". The second wife had shouted back, calling on the provocateur to stay silent. No one would repeat his response to Miria, and she was glad for it. The old episcopal had asked for peace. His voice went unheard.
Past that point, the exact sequence of events became harder to reconstruct. It also didn't, exactly, matter. The stories Miria received grew scattered and incomplete, comprising mostly of sudden silences and voices breaking on single word shoals. But she learned enough: that Visza had made an attempt to defend herself, that it had not worked, that it was hard to say exactly who did what, and how much, and that the Lady Governor would not allow anyone to see what they had done to the body.
But the temple and the crime were not the first place Miria's thoughts went to when she learned of the murder.
***
"In cold blood, in broad daylight, they murdered my Visza."
Desperately, Miria tried not to think on the way that a part of her felt a sudden burst of relief that it was the second that died, and not anyone closer to her heart. She could only pray to the Holy—for one ought not to implore Want for such things—that the emotion did not show on her face, that nothing betrayed her.
Around her, the Star Chamber erupted into words. There were a lot of them, and most failed to find purchase in the sixth wife's memory, being meant to offer shallow consolation or express the still inchoate grief. What she did remember was more scattered, a series of images and sounds impressed themselves into her memories as dim snap-shots.
She remembered the first wife's free hand gripping an edge of a table tightly enough for her claws to dig deep trenches in the polished walnut. She remembered her refusal to join the explosion of voices, and her mouth instead moving to the shape of a question—how could they?—and a curse—episcopal brutes.
She remembered the third wife offering her a hug, her large hand and spacious body drinking each other's sadness. She remembered feeling vaguely sick as she heard a "no need to hold back tears" whispered into her ear, for she was more startled and terrified, rather than desolate.
She remembered the fourth and the fifth wife holding together, arguing quickly, their voices low and burdened by all the different kinds of fear. She remembered seeing the fourth push herself away from the fifth's forceful hold, and approach the Lady Governor in utmost deference, to beg her for mercy for the city of Karsz.
But most of all she remembered hearing her wife's claws grind around the steel of her saber's scabbard, before her words cut through the cacophony to announce:
"The fault is with me. I should have protected her."
Miria remembered that most of all, because it was when she realized that something was out of joint.
***
Years before Miria's marriage was even a consideration, her father had been working to raise her the way a burgher's son ought to be raised. He'd made her accompany him to the smoke-filled coffee-houses of Karsz, to there learn the twinned patterns of commerce and politics. It was in one of those dark, loud rooms that she had first heard of Visza. Of course, her father and his allies—doctors, lawyers, professors, distinguished burghers all—referred to her by another name, and with ruder words. But their concern was always her safety.
A lawyer complained how the episcopacy was badgering him to find a law to bar Visza from the temple, and stop the scandal of her sitting with women. In response, her father banged the table, spilling the coffee all over. The myopia of his fellows frustrated him to no end. So what, he kept asking, that she—he did not use that word—provokes the faithful? So what that the old clerics complain? He made them remember what the infernal guns could do, and how much they all owed to the regrettable overthrow of the old order. And so, word by word, they came to an agreement that there should always be a handful of broad-shouldered and small-minded men not far from where Visza sat in the temple, just so that they would be insured against the youth's folly.
Where were those men, when a dozen cruel arms dragged Visza away?
***
Eventually, the first wave of shock and grief receded, and a choking quiet settled over the Star Chamber. Only then did the Lady Governor speak at more length, in clipped words that each fell like a piece of flint.
"You will hear soon," she announced, "that the men who did this have claimed sanctuary, and that this puts them out of my reach."
All the wives but the first startled at that. The episcopacy had long mandated that the grounds of their temples were supposed to be sacred beyond the reach of any temporal power. Any and all could find shelter within them, no matter the severity of their crimes. As long as they were ready to renounce their life and remand themselves into the care of the episcopacy, they were supposed to be immune from prosecution. Every child in the lowlands knew that the name of King Piszan the Apostate was to be spoken as a curse, for he had dared to violate the holy custom.
"I will not allow it for long."
The pronouncement carried a terrifying implication, and Miria shuddered. The Lady Governor had carried her rule with a soft hand, and her soft hand was what kept the lowlanders at peace. There was no way a sacrilege of such proportion would not shatter it all and vindicate everything the old aristocrats suggested about Her Infernal Majesty's purported true nature. If Miria had been braver, and not a boy-toy wife, she would have opened her mouth to protest. Thankfully, someone else did it instead.
"Please," Stava whimpered, again close to falling to her knees. "Lady wife. Don't."
"I will tear the walls of the Overwhelming Grace with my bare hands, if it is what justice takes," she replied without reproach, and without reprieve.
"You must not act in a rush," Mażin joined the voice of protest. "Consider what you have built!"
"Consider what she has lost," Luna snarled behind her, the table coming apart under the tension of her touch. "Do you really think that those brutes," the word was a slur, was a curse, "would show you the same kind of loyalty that you still pile at them?"
"Enough!"
The saber smashed into the floor, loud enough to make the window-panes ring in their frames. The Lady Governor's voice cut through the noise, and silenced everyone.
"This is not for you to debate! This will be done."
Everyone in the chamber had to understand what that meant. Miria could only bow her head in shame that it made her stomach twist more than the murder itself did.
"Until then, I will mourn as the Want demands."
Miria bit her lip; the other three human wives froze in place, giving the Lady Governor troubled looks. Only Luna seemed to relax at the announcement, shaking stray splinters away from her claws.
"I make no demand that you join me," the Lady Governor continued, "but leave the door to my chamber open, if you so wish."
The blob of hellfire dissipated as Luna closed her hand around it. She pushed herself up from her chair, and then across the floor, next to where Stava had knelt.
"I offer my body to our grief, lady wife."
Another knotted thought wound itself around Miria's throat, making it hard to breathe. So it was true, what they said about how demons grieved for their dead. She should be appalled—and a part of her was. And yet, what she felt more as she looked at the lilac demoness offering herself for this task was not revulsion, but the familiar tug of desire. How had she herself longed for those mighty red hands.
Before she could join Luna in supplication, the Lady Governor looked down at her first wife, and a brief shadow flitted through her face.
"Visza will be buried according to her rites."
The first wife's head shot up in shock. She bit down on a word. The other wives sighed in something akin to relief.
"Thank you," Stava whispered, returning to Czewa's embrace.
"Finally," exhaustion seeped into the Lady Governor's voice, softening its edge, "I have to ask you not to leave the palace grounds. Not until justice is served."
Her eyes stopped on Miria as she said that, and the sixth wife knew exactly why. Her visits to her family had not gotten unnoticed.
"Leave now. Only Miria stays."
For a moment, as the other wives passed her in a flurry of white cloth, Miria found herself choked by panic. Had the Lady Governor noticed her absence of tears? Had she remembered the lie from earlier today? Was she about to blame her for not loving Visza enough? Was…
"There is something you must know," the demonic woman whispered, trying for softness.
She put a hand on Miria's shoulder, and guided her to a chair, so that she could sit. It was a warm gesture, and in spite of everything, the boy-toy wife found reassurance in it—reassurance and comfort. She waited until her wife also settled into a chair, deflating ever so slightly. Fury took its toll on even the fiercest of infernal flames.
"Sixteen men," she began to explain, "scurried to the Overwhelming Grace. They were the… the mob."
Miria nodded slowly, not sure where this was headed, and trying not to imagine what the pious mob had done, with a hymn of worship on their lips. They were the kind of people she grew up learning to fear, for more reason than one. The moment she thought of that, an awful premonition speared her straight through her heart. She desperately did not want it to come true.
"Your brother was among them."
Come true it did.
"Did you know anything about it?"
"No," Miria replied, blunt and automatic.
Something softened in the Lady Governor's face. She extended a hand, then withdrew it, strange awkwardness guiding the gesture.
"I'm sorry," she said, not insincerely.
In a way, it was lovely to be addressed like that, to be seen, to be cared for. Had she not asked for this earlier today? But it was only one way, and the others led to blunt pain.
"Was he the one who…?" Miria asked, unsure if she wanted to learn.
"I don't know. It doesn't matter. There are no degrees of guilt here."
For a moment, Miria could only dwell on that new, throbbing hurt. It took the shape of the memory of her father's pen, shaking as he signed her marriage contract, the first document to bear the name "Miria" on it. It sounded of her mother's promise that she would always be welcome back home, no matter what the demons did to her. It was not the truth, of course—Miria knew what lay at the limits of that love—but an honest lie at least. And her parents deserved better than to lose both their children.
But then, a sharp realization pierced through the thick haze surrounding Miria's mind. What had her brother even been doing in the Overwhelming Grace? It was not a burgher's temple; for him to show up there would be a scandal to say the least. The aristocrats loathed Her Infernal Majesty's power the most, but they were never short on contempt for their old inferiors. Even the thugs Miria's father hired—the thugs that for some reason remained absent from all the mentions of the crime—belonged not to the criminal order, but to the ranks of the dispossessed nobles who clung to their titles and privileges all the more fiercely as their wealth was bled from them.
For a moment, she readied herself to ask the question; but her lady wife seemed so exhausted, and so filled with fire, that the words burnt out on her tongue, though she greedily allowed herself to receive a few more moments of the Lady Governor's comfort. But when she finally left the Star Chamber, leaving the demonic woman alone, her mind was already starting to wander. Something was out of joint, and if her parents were to be spared the grief the palace groaned under, then she would have to find out what it was.
For the first time since she was married, Mira started to consider a way to disobey her wife's commands.
Not long after the wedding night, when Miria had first started taking the wife-medicine, she'd been pulled aside by Mażin, the third wife. Then, over a few glasses of sickeningly sweet coffee liqueur, the older women had quickly explained to the newly-wed what effects the medicine would have. At first, it had been mostly a cordial attempt to dispel some common, lowland superstitions, but it had not taken Mażin long to notice that the sixth wife needed no such reassurances. Instead, Miria showed disappointment when Mażin informed her that many of the changes would not be the instantaneous transformation that lowland broadsheets warned against, but rather be subtle at first, and take long to fully manifest. And so what was meant to be a consolation quickly turned into more matter-of-fact advice: warnings that Miria's muscles would weaken, that she would get strange cravings and new kinds of morning sickness, and that she should probably accept the fact that some days, she was going to find herself crying for no good reason at all.
Today was one such day. The boy-toy wife stood bent and stuck in a pillory, unable to look away from the statue of Want filling her vision. Blood, drool, and someone else's ejaculate dripped from the sides of her body, now joined by her tears.
Miria could not entirely explain why she was also sobbing. Was she unhappy? Unfulfilled, perhaps. Or just plain unfilled—she'd wanted Luna to drive into her, to make her squeal and moan like when the Lady Governor took her in possession on the night of their marriage. But the frustration did not hurt; it knotted her insides and made her try to rub her thighs together around her nethers, so warm and flushed. There was nothing she could do that could bring her past the peak and relieve the desire, and to realize how much this pleased her made her wince in shame and bite down on the gag, which only made it feel better.
When she closed her eyes, she imagined a hydra of hands reaching from the braided wall of limbs that ringed the shrine. They captured her, pried her open, and made such use of her—and each left a coin in gratitude, until Miria's feet sank into gold. Far away, the city's bells sang praise of this sacrifice.
Were the tears streaming down her cheeks joy, then? She did as she was told, and let the great, formless want fill her thoughts. The heat of the shrine, the play of shadows, desperate, helpless arousal all invited the same thing: surrender. This had to be the lesson Luna left her to learn, and she was so very grateful for the shrine-keeper's wicked pedagogy.
Metal scraped behind her; a cold gust blew as the door opened. For a split second, Miria wished for nothing but to see another piece of gold roll next to the lonesome thaler. Someone would come and grip her by her hips, no matter how unfeminine, and then make use of them as if of a wife. Her mouth tensed around the metal ring, face burning scarlet with eager shame.
But it was not to be.
"Young lady?"
Miria recognized the voice—it was Mariś, one of her chamber-maids. Nervous footsteps clacked on the basalt floor, way outside her field of vision; she tried to twist her head to see the woman approach, and got only to look at a hand nervously approach the padlock keeping the pillory shut, then withdraw. But the boy-toy wife did not need more to feel the weight of someone's gaze settle on the drying pattern sprayed over the small of her back. Shame curdled into sheer humiliation; without meaning to, Miria strained against her bonds; her reward was the sound of a woman stepping away.
"Uh," Mariś hitched audibly. "The Hofmeisterin, uh—says you have to—I'm so sorry! I didn't meant to—The Hofmeisterin says you need to return to the palace immediately!"
What rang in the maid's voice was neither desire, nor admiration, but sharp embarrassment. A tension lifted off Miria's back as the illicit stare moved aside; Mariś was looking away, trying desperately not to see the sorry display in front of her. Of course. What else could the sixth wife have expected?
"Ah," she tried to speak through the gag, "han't fhee myhelf."
"Young lady?" the maid asked, clearly and desperately wishing to be anywhere else but here.
"Ah!" Miria chewed on the metal ring, "Han't! Fhee! Myhelf!"
"I'll get the Hofmeisterin!" Mariś cried out in panic, and bolted, running away fast enough to forget to close the door behind her.
The warnings that the third wife had delivered to Miria, punctuated by quick sips of a tar-like drink, went into great detail. She did not limit herself to letting Miria know that she should be ready for unexpected tears. Mażin had made sure that the newly-wed, newly-wifed girl was also aware of the fact that the medicine would sometimes also lead to times when everything abruptly started tasting of shit.
The cold weather seeped past the ajar door, pushing past the hellfire's heat and setting Miria to a shiver. Moments ago, she'd fancied herself everyone's desire, and now was forced to reckon with what really stood bound before the effigy of Want: an unfinished, patsy body, stripped of everything that could make it passable. If she had been laid bare it was not to be admired, but rather so that she would never forget what anyone with a pair of eyes could see her for. Those thoughts were, of course, nothing but another hysteric bout, a spasm of a body slowly morphing into a new shape: but knowing was a small reprieve at best. Besides, she was no longer crying, and quite clear-eyed about the matter.
The banging of rushed steps snapped her out of the spiraling train of thought. Before she could realize what was happening, the pillory's lock clicked open. Careful hands wrapped a thick blanket around her chest, and helped her up, the light and dark staging a brief dance before her eyes. Through a nauseating vertigo, the sixth wife glimpsed Mariś, trying to be tender, and the towering lilac shape of Luna. Without thinking, she reached out, trying to come into an embrace; she desperately longed to be reassured in the demoness' warmth.
"Not now," the priestess of Want pushed her back, voice vibrating a wire about to snap.
Mira stumbled; Mariś caught her under the arms, then quickly brought up a handkerchief to wipe drool from her lips. The sixth wife blinked, feeling another tremble go through her. Luna was already disappearing in the door, taking great, unfeminine steps. The bells of the city had not stopped ringing.
"I—" Mariś muttered, guiding Miria down onto a pew, "I brought you fresh clothes. It's—"
Her voice faded briefly; the young woman let herself be vested, limp in the maid's experienced hands. Consciousness, in the full sense of the word, was slow to return.
"The Hofmeisterin?" she finally managed to ask.
Mariś did not look up from the floor, fingers struggling with the laces on the freshly-lacquered shoes fitted to the sixth wife's oversized feet.
"Tending to matters," the maid replied, quivering ever so slightly. "She said, only the shrine-keeper can touch…"
She threw an uneasy glance at the restraint, trying not to look at the statue beneath. Miria felt bad for the girl. The Lady Governor made a point of taking lowlanders into service, and not interfering with their worship of the Holy. But they rarely ever returned that grace and tried to see what the infernals brought as anything but filth and defilement. Miria thought back to her brother, pounding the table back home, because he believed that no amount of occupier's favour could justify sacrificing his brother to the monstrous Want. She thought of how she'd looked away then, so that he would not have to see into her eyes, and realize how the marriage was nothing how he had thought it like.
The truth, of course, would have only made it worse.
"Let me wash your face."
With a damp cloth, Mariś wiped away the last of makeup from Miria. And then they were done; the sixth wife, in a fresh white dress, and the shrine in disarray. There was no reason to torture the maid by forcing her to stay here any longer; and besides, there was a clear urgency to whatever matter had made the Hofmeisterin summon her so far ahead of the schedule.
Or maybe it was not urgency, but something far worse. Each step Miria took through the rainy afternoon, towards the pillared front of the Lady Governor's palace, seemed to suggest as much. The place was out of joint. An unfamiliar cart, covered in stained canvas, stood parked near the front door. Servants rushed through spring mud, heedless of the dirt staining the once-spotless white of their liveries. They were not alone; house soldiers, in their blood-red jackets, flocked to the courtyard, rifles at the ready.
"What's going on?" Miria asked the maid, feeling a terrible, shapeless worry swell in her stomach.
Mariś waved her shoulders in helpless confusion. But what the girl did not know, other things betrayed. They entered into the palace's great hall, and passed by its previous owners' pride: a great, free-standing clock, ornamented with gold leaf and ivory. Now, a pair of servants worked to stop it. One held the pendulum still, the other set the hour to a motionless twelve. White splashed the walls; white veils and white blindfolds to install over the eyes of the old aristocrats staring from countless portraits. The time was to be stilled, and the eyes of the dead turned away from the living. The furious tolling of hundreds of bells no longer penetrated past the thick walls, but Miria knew they had not stopped. Though the wailing was yet to start, it was only a matter of time. Death had come to her wife's home. The question remained: for whom? In its wake, there was fear.
Please, don't let it be my wife.
They met the Hofmeisterin on the stairs up. The old servant caught a glimpse of Miria and approached, for once without a reproach. There were no comments about Miria's gait, and not even a demand that she should be ashamed of the way her beard shadow peered from under the removed poudres. In fact, the Hofmeisterin herself seemed ashamed, constantly picking at the sides of her black dress, standing out like an ink-spill against the backdrop of mourning white. Before she spoke, her hands opened and closed a few times, struggling to catch a semblance of collected calm.
"Young lady. The Lady Governor is in the Star Chamber," she announced finally, grief drowning everything else her voice might have carried. "Make haste."
Her mouth moved as if to add something. Miria pushed past her, and to the stairs, almost tripping over her feet, only holding herself up by a hand clutching the railing. Each half-run, half-rush carried her two, maybe three steps up, until she found herself in the wide hall that had once served as an audience room for generations of magnates. Now, white cloth blinded the gallery of their portraits so that they would not look at the bier erected in the center. Its sight drew a stifled sigh of relief from Miria. A shape of a body unmistakably peered from under the snow-white shroud—but of a body too small to be Asha. The Star Chamber waited beyond; she rushed forward. If not the Lady Governor, then who?
Luna, the first? Visza, the second? Mażin, the third? Czewa, the fourth? Stava, the fifth?
The ceiling turned blue and studded with gold. The scent of incense filled the Star Chamber, mixed into the overpowering warmth of hellfire cupped in Luna's hand. The first wife sat alone at the side, at some distance from the short, stout Mażin, appearing even smaller for the oversized saber she clutched in her hands. To see her perform the role of the third, of the arms-bearer, was rare, and an awful omen for what was to come. Czewa and Stava stood not far, hands and fingers wound tightly together. In mourning whites, they seemed older than usual, their faces icons of rough-hewn handsomeness, as if taken from the stained-glass portraits of episcopal holy men.
A few eyes turned at Miria's entrance, but all the wives remained focused on the demonic women in the center of them—the only one wearing not the white of lamentation, but the red of war. Silver medals glinted from the Lady Governor's chest, her colonel's uniform giving a new sharpness to her silhouette. She acknowledged her sixth wife's entrance with a tip of her head, and motion at the third.
In a slow, careful motion, Mażin came closer, and knelt before her wife, offering the sword and the scabbard up. In that moment, watching the Lady Governor's hand close around the hilt, Miria realized that her wife came not to grieve, but to avenge.
"They," she announced, "murdered Visza."
***
It would take Miria hours and days to patch together—from hushed gossip, aborted half-statements, and overheard shreds of conversation—an explanation of what had happened, even if only an incomplete one. There were certain facts, however, that she could establish beyond dispute.
On the day of her killing, Visza attended a service in the Overwhelming Grace. It was a temple her great-grandfather had founded, during the last flowering of the late kingdom of Leshia. To sit in its front pews, among the aristocrats of the old realm, was therefore more than a privilege for her: it was her birthright. As always, she had a seat reserved to the left of the altar, among women. It was a minor holy day, and the temple was packed, especially since a famous itinerant preacher was visiting to address the congregation. According to ritual order, Bużan, the city's old episcopal, administered the first rites, and yielded the pulpit when it was time for the sermon.
The visiting preacher—a man by the name of Striczyk, distantly related to the cadet branch of one of the Leshian royal houses—based his sermon on the popular parable: that of two medicines. He followed its beats faithfully, telling of a physician who had two powerful medicines, one to cure plague, and one to cure cholera. Unfortunately, his foolish wife assumed that if the medicines were each strong on their own, then they would become even stronger when mixed. But they turned into a deadly poison, and brought great misery to people instead.
Striczyk needed not to explain much further, for the point had to be clear to all in attendance. Morbidly, Miria could not help but to wonder what Visza had made out of it; how she had felt as the eyes of holy men turned to her, and the beautiful dress she wore, a gift from the Lady Governor's own hands.
As ever, when the sermon finished, so came the time to administer blessings. Visza had put herself in line with other women, waiting patiently for the old episcopal to lay his hands on her. It was at that point when some man shouted—from the back pews, from among the young noble sons—a question. Allegedly, he wore the colours of the old kingdom on him, and a brooch with the Leshian griffon. "Who," he asked, "is trying to poison us?". The second wife had shouted back, calling on the provocateur to stay silent. No one would repeat his response to Miria, and she was glad for it. The old episcopal had asked for peace. His voice went unheard.
Past that point, the exact sequence of events became harder to reconstruct. It also didn't, exactly, matter. The stories Miria received grew scattered and incomplete, comprising mostly of sudden silences and voices breaking on single word shoals. But she learned enough: that Visza had made an attempt to defend herself, that it had not worked, that it was hard to say exactly who did what, and how much, and that the Lady Governor would not allow anyone to see what they had done to the body.
But the temple and the crime were not the first place Miria's thoughts went to when she learned of the murder.
***
"In cold blood, in broad daylight, they murdered my Visza."
Desperately, Miria tried not to think on the way that a part of her felt a sudden burst of relief that it was the second that died, and not anyone closer to her heart. She could only pray to the Holy—for one ought not to implore Want for such things—that the emotion did not show on her face, that nothing betrayed her.
Around her, the Star Chamber erupted into words. There were a lot of them, and most failed to find purchase in the sixth wife's memory, being meant to offer shallow consolation or express the still inchoate grief. What she did remember was more scattered, a series of images and sounds impressed themselves into her memories as dim snap-shots.
She remembered the first wife's free hand gripping an edge of a table tightly enough for her claws to dig deep trenches in the polished walnut. She remembered her refusal to join the explosion of voices, and her mouth instead moving to the shape of a question—how could they?—and a curse—episcopal brutes.
She remembered the third wife offering her a hug, her large hand and spacious body drinking each other's sadness. She remembered feeling vaguely sick as she heard a "no need to hold back tears" whispered into her ear, for she was more startled and terrified, rather than desolate.
She remembered the fourth and the fifth wife holding together, arguing quickly, their voices low and burdened by all the different kinds of fear. She remembered seeing the fourth push herself away from the fifth's forceful hold, and approach the Lady Governor in utmost deference, to beg her for mercy for the city of Karsz.
But most of all she remembered hearing her wife's claws grind around the steel of her saber's scabbard, before her words cut through the cacophony to announce:
"The fault is with me. I should have protected her."
Miria remembered that most of all, because it was when she realized that something was out of joint.
***
Years before Miria's marriage was even a consideration, her father had been working to raise her the way a burgher's son ought to be raised. He'd made her accompany him to the smoke-filled coffee-houses of Karsz, to there learn the twinned patterns of commerce and politics. It was in one of those dark, loud rooms that she had first heard of Visza. Of course, her father and his allies—doctors, lawyers, professors, distinguished burghers all—referred to her by another name, and with ruder words. But their concern was always her safety.
A lawyer complained how the episcopacy was badgering him to find a law to bar Visza from the temple, and stop the scandal of her sitting with women. In response, her father banged the table, spilling the coffee all over. The myopia of his fellows frustrated him to no end. So what, he kept asking, that she—he did not use that word—provokes the faithful? So what that the old clerics complain? He made them remember what the infernal guns could do, and how much they all owed to the regrettable overthrow of the old order. And so, word by word, they came to an agreement that there should always be a handful of broad-shouldered and small-minded men not far from where Visza sat in the temple, just so that they would be insured against the youth's folly.
Where were those men, when a dozen cruel arms dragged Visza away?
***
Eventually, the first wave of shock and grief receded, and a choking quiet settled over the Star Chamber. Only then did the Lady Governor speak at more length, in clipped words that each fell like a piece of flint.
"You will hear soon," she announced, "that the men who did this have claimed sanctuary, and that this puts them out of my reach."
All the wives but the first startled at that. The episcopacy had long mandated that the grounds of their temples were supposed to be sacred beyond the reach of any temporal power. Any and all could find shelter within them, no matter the severity of their crimes. As long as they were ready to renounce their life and remand themselves into the care of the episcopacy, they were supposed to be immune from prosecution. Every child in the lowlands knew that the name of King Piszan the Apostate was to be spoken as a curse, for he had dared to violate the holy custom.
"I will not allow it for long."
The pronouncement carried a terrifying implication, and Miria shuddered. The Lady Governor had carried her rule with a soft hand, and her soft hand was what kept the lowlanders at peace. There was no way a sacrilege of such proportion would not shatter it all and vindicate everything the old aristocrats suggested about Her Infernal Majesty's purported true nature. If Miria had been braver, and not a boy-toy wife, she would have opened her mouth to protest. Thankfully, someone else did it instead.
"Please," Stava whimpered, again close to falling to her knees. "Lady wife. Don't."
"I will tear the walls of the Overwhelming Grace with my bare hands, if it is what justice takes," she replied without reproach, and without reprieve.
"You must not act in a rush," Mażin joined the voice of protest. "Consider what you have built!"
"Consider what she has lost," Luna snarled behind her, the table coming apart under the tension of her touch. "Do you really think that those brutes," the word was a slur, was a curse, "would show you the same kind of loyalty that you still pile at them?"
"Enough!"
The saber smashed into the floor, loud enough to make the window-panes ring in their frames. The Lady Governor's voice cut through the noise, and silenced everyone.
"This is not for you to debate! This will be done."
Everyone in the chamber had to understand what that meant. Miria could only bow her head in shame that it made her stomach twist more than the murder itself did.
"Until then, I will mourn as the Want demands."
Miria bit her lip; the other three human wives froze in place, giving the Lady Governor troubled looks. Only Luna seemed to relax at the announcement, shaking stray splinters away from her claws.
"I make no demand that you join me," the Lady Governor continued, "but leave the door to my chamber open, if you so wish."
The blob of hellfire dissipated as Luna closed her hand around it. She pushed herself up from her chair, and then across the floor, next to where Stava had knelt.
"I offer my body to our grief, lady wife."
Another knotted thought wound itself around Miria's throat, making it hard to breathe. So it was true, what they said about how demons grieved for their dead. She should be appalled—and a part of her was. And yet, what she felt more as she looked at the lilac demoness offering herself for this task was not revulsion, but the familiar tug of desire. How had she herself longed for those mighty red hands.
Before she could join Luna in supplication, the Lady Governor looked down at her first wife, and a brief shadow flitted through her face.
"Visza will be buried according to her rites."
The first wife's head shot up in shock. She bit down on a word. The other wives sighed in something akin to relief.
"Thank you," Stava whispered, returning to Czewa's embrace.
"Finally," exhaustion seeped into the Lady Governor's voice, softening its edge, "I have to ask you not to leave the palace grounds. Not until justice is served."
Her eyes stopped on Miria as she said that, and the sixth wife knew exactly why. Her visits to her family had not gotten unnoticed.
"Leave now. Only Miria stays."
For a moment, as the other wives passed her in a flurry of white cloth, Miria found herself choked by panic. Had the Lady Governor noticed her absence of tears? Had she remembered the lie from earlier today? Was she about to blame her for not loving Visza enough? Was…
"There is something you must know," the demonic woman whispered, trying for softness.
She put a hand on Miria's shoulder, and guided her to a chair, so that she could sit. It was a warm gesture, and in spite of everything, the boy-toy wife found reassurance in it—reassurance and comfort. She waited until her wife also settled into a chair, deflating ever so slightly. Fury took its toll on even the fiercest of infernal flames.
"Sixteen men," she began to explain, "scurried to the Overwhelming Grace. They were the… the mob."
Miria nodded slowly, not sure where this was headed, and trying not to imagine what the pious mob had done, with a hymn of worship on their lips. They were the kind of people she grew up learning to fear, for more reason than one. The moment she thought of that, an awful premonition speared her straight through her heart. She desperately did not want it to come true.
"Your brother was among them."
Come true it did.
"Did you know anything about it?"
"No," Miria replied, blunt and automatic.
Something softened in the Lady Governor's face. She extended a hand, then withdrew it, strange awkwardness guiding the gesture.
"I'm sorry," she said, not insincerely.
In a way, it was lovely to be addressed like that, to be seen, to be cared for. Had she not asked for this earlier today? But it was only one way, and the others led to blunt pain.
"Was he the one who…?" Miria asked, unsure if she wanted to learn.
"I don't know. It doesn't matter. There are no degrees of guilt here."
For a moment, Miria could only dwell on that new, throbbing hurt. It took the shape of the memory of her father's pen, shaking as he signed her marriage contract, the first document to bear the name "Miria" on it. It sounded of her mother's promise that she would always be welcome back home, no matter what the demons did to her. It was not the truth, of course—Miria knew what lay at the limits of that love—but an honest lie at least. And her parents deserved better than to lose both their children.
But then, a sharp realization pierced through the thick haze surrounding Miria's mind. What had her brother even been doing in the Overwhelming Grace? It was not a burgher's temple; for him to show up there would be a scandal to say the least. The aristocrats loathed Her Infernal Majesty's power the most, but they were never short on contempt for their old inferiors. Even the thugs Miria's father hired—the thugs that for some reason remained absent from all the mentions of the crime—belonged not to the criminal order, but to the ranks of the dispossessed nobles who clung to their titles and privileges all the more fiercely as their wealth was bled from them.
For a moment, she readied herself to ask the question; but her lady wife seemed so exhausted, and so filled with fire, that the words burnt out on her tongue, though she greedily allowed herself to receive a few more moments of the Lady Governor's comfort. But when she finally left the Star Chamber, leaving the demonic woman alone, her mind was already starting to wander. Something was out of joint, and if her parents were to be spared the grief the palace groaned under, then she would have to find out what it was.
For the first time since she was married, Mira started to consider a way to disobey her wife's commands.
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