Picks up where Punishment Day Festival left off.
BREEAH
I had known things were going to be bad when they got me. I was handing out pamphlets on the unfairness of the rule of Sattvia over us and the sorry lot of women in general under the rule of men and the few select matriarchs that insured there were few ways for a clever girl to advance without finding herself in a position of abject submission to someone.
Of course the fact that I had a coveted position at University (where I accessed the printing press, illicitly, to make our sheets) meant that my fellow conspirators had all been dutifully--if horridly--punished in the typical tyrannical manner that the lower born were chastised in.
One of the guards cheerily told me that Gwendiwell was marched, naked, led by a chain behind a cart to the presentation scaffold where she was strung up in strictly tied knots so that her arms were pinned behind her and her ankles were bound up behind her neck such that her lower quarters were bared strongly for the crowd and she was stretched painfully.
Then, after a switching that left her covered with red marks over almost every surface (but mostly her bottom, the guard had informed me) the crowd was allowed to hurl eggs provided in large amounts for that purpose--and, it appeared, were intent to aim for her displayed vulva.
After being thoroughly coated with slime, she was then feathered with the dropped feathers from the Sattvian Order's Mocking Bird cages that clung to the goo and left her skin covered with rash. I was appalled. Having been raised in the Nordlian midlands in the care of a rival order, the fashion of punishment was far less obscene and I bristled at the terrible humiliation and indignity that those who were subject to the Order's discipline suffered here in the south.
However, when I learned I was being kept in a cell until the Festival, a full moon from my date of capture, I had plenty of time to consider my fate and the terror of it consumed me over and over.
The cell had been surprisingly comfortable with a nicely appointed bed, a rug, and toilet. The worst part was the Order Nurse who came in the evening before bed to lock me into a kind of corset that featured a firm set of bone plates at the bottom that wrapped my sex and buttocks as a chastity lock to prevent me from having any access to myself. She explained that this was preferable to chaining my wrists or using one of the magical talismans that prevented masturbation but had unpleasant side effects.
The act of being dressed for bed by the woman was intensely humiliating and while I dared not fight, I admit I cried each time--something she apparently found mildly amusing.
When I was taken to a chamber, the night before the festival, I was in a state. It was there that I met a young woman sitting at a table with a massive bookshelf dominating the wall behind her.
I was guided to a simple wooden chair. I wore only a nightshirt--and the guard placed her hand on my shoulder seating me. Then wrapped a leather strap around my waist fastening it to the back of the chair--and knelt to strap each of my bare ankles to one the chair legs. I dared not glare at the young woman before me: it had been made clear that any of the order functionaries could strike me as they pleased--a spanking, they called it--but I called it abuse and the idea of being struck--being helpless and being slapped over and over on a tender part of my private anatomy--was sufficient to keep me behaved for the time being.
The woman, I saw, had one of my pamphlets--she examined it momentarily, glancing at me. She had beautiful green eyes. When she placed it down with a sense of having made a decision, I held my breath. I had never intended my face to be joined with the text on that pamphlet--it was a vicious indictment of the order, claiming that it made whores of its women as they were subject to sexual orders from their senior members. It also claimed that the order was hypocritical: punishing only the lower orders, while the upper orders were free to behave as they liked. I knew this was said to be true by some--but I had no hard evidence of it. Now I wished I'd not said those things.
"Breeah Lavison? Nineteen years--and... a student in good standing at the Indexium College."
"Not any more," I said bitterly then. Thinking of all I had thrown away in getting caught.
"No?" She seemed curious--somehow.
"After this," I said, thickly. "I expect they have already given my dormitory away--and expunged me from the records."
The young woman seemed surprised at this. She consulted papers and then looked back at me. "No--I have a letter of recommendation from the dean of Indexium. He feels you should have... increased supervision," she read. "And likely some additional restrictions--but he otherwise seems to think well of you."
She placed the paper down.
"What I want--"
The look on my face stopped her. "What?"
"I was caught h-handing out subversive documents--I--I--offended the crown and offended the Order--" I was in disbelief.
"Yes--" she said. "And you are going to be punished thoroughly for it, girl. But the university sees no reason to separate you from it."
She examined me. "You grew up in the Nordalian Reach?"
I nodded. "In an orphanage. My parents were captured by Kistarian pirates. The monks took us in."
"The monks of Lianios." She said, The rival order.
"Yes." I swallowed.
"They handle the edicts differently. Discipline. Dominance. Right?"
