Slaves of Elysium (23 page)

In a state of great excitement they were led through a side gate of the slave house and out onto the street. The girls followed in a tight group behind Kara, their training making them fall naturally in step and move as one, their bare shoulders brushing together.

They turned into a street of small shops, and Kara paused to examine the goods on display. They passed dealers in artworks, a store selling shiny metal and plastic assemblages that must have been the local equivalent of high-technology electronic goods, and a confectioner. In a small dressmaking shop a slave girl in the display window was parading up and down, striking poses to show off clothes, then changing in full sight of the onlookers into another garment. She was a living mannequin.

Kara paused outside this shop for a few moments, and Jeni noticed with silent amusement Rebecca's open fascination with the garments on offer. A woman who had dismissed some of the highest fashions Paris and New York had to offer was now gazing longingly at the most modest of clothes.

They continued on through the streets, the girls' heads turning this way and that, drinking in the colour and bustle. As usual Jeni and Rebecca received a few interested glances, but they were hardly aware of them. They were naked slave girls, what else did they expect?

In time they came to a street bounded by a long wall, over which could be seen the tops of trees. A short way along was a gateway that gave access to a large public park. It was the first such space Jeni had seen so far in the city.

Paths wound between carefully tended flowerbeds and shady trees, unblemished by even a scrap of litter. People walked about sedately, a few going so far as to sit under the trees. Set within an already orderly city untroubled by the roar of traffic, this was almost unnaturally tranquil.

Selecting a shaded bench, Kara sat down. She released the girls' leashes and they seated themselves automatically in a ring about her feet. Unpacking a light meal from her basket, Kara ate from a selection of sweet and savoury pastries, then began tossing the girls titbits, who ducked and bobbed, trying to catch the morsels in their mouths. Kara seemed in good humour and laughed at their efforts. Cautiously the girls joined in.

A man followed by a girl slave harnessed like a dog walked along the path close by. As he passed he threw a ball across the grass and she bounded after it on all fours. She retrieved and returned it to him and he patted her head affectionately. The pair disappeared between the trees with the girl still carrying the ball in her mouth.

This little incident seemed to prompt Kara, for she took from her bag a couple of flat rings the size of frisbees, which she threw on the grass in front of them. Pointing her controller she then freed their cuffs.

‘You may play with these,' she told them, seeing the uncertain look on their faces. ‘Go on.'

The rings were remarkably light and seemed to have minds of their own, sometimes banking away in unpredictable directions after they were thrown. The girls darted and leapt across the grass as they chased after the weaving, dodging rings, bumping into each other and tumbling over with shrieks of laughter. It was the freest they had been since they'd been captured.

Even as she ran with the others, Jeni wondered if the withholding of simple pleasures like this would in time be used to help keep them in check. That might be more effective than any physical punishment.

She looked around and saw both strollers and picnickers watching them with indulgent smiles on their faces. Of course, they were five attractive naked young women exhibiting themselves to the full in a wild game.

Even to those familiar with bare flesh it must be a more than averagely pleasant spectacle to watch the array of shapely limbs in action, complete with tensing buttocks and bobbing breasts. Yet why were their looks quite so benign?

Suddenly Jeni realised what was missing in that orderly park. There were no children or pets anywhere to be seen.

Jeni knew from Cath that the proportion of children in the population was low, which perhaps explained their absence, and possibly there was no tradition of keeping pets in Elysium, at least in the cities, or not ones large enough to take for a run in the park. But there was something else Cath had not explained.

The lack of children or pets left, perhaps subconsciously, a gap in everyday life. So the people filled it with girl slaves.

They made them into helpless, dependent creatures, ruled by their carefully nurtured and channelled instincts to be sensuous beings without inhibitions. Slave girls replaced both children and pets, and like them were sometimes permitted to exhibit that impulsive playfulness and innocent enjoyment in simple pleasures that the reserved citizens of Ceroth missed. This was not just a reward for good behaviour. It was a release for their masters.

 

After the flying ring game, Kara indulged the girls by buying them five large crysols from a refreshment kiosk. Crysols were fruit-flavoured ice desserts, similar to sorbets. It was a rare treat and the girls licked the cartons clean.

They soon found it necessary to visit the park's slave urinal, which was simply an open trough that they could squat over to pee, and then be washed clean by automatic water jets. The splash of the fountains was delightfully refreshing.

Then, wrists and ankles cuffed together once more, they lay in the shade on the cool grass, heads pillowed on each other's limbs, while Kara dozed on a bench with her hat over her eyes. Jeni found Zarri's bottom was resting by her head, so she fondly kissed the swell of coppery skin because, in its unblemished apple-roundness, there seemed to lie the essence of a perfect day.

 

It was when they were back in the courtyard of the slave house once more that Kara made her announcement.

‘You all did very well today,' she told them, as they knelt before her. ‘You behaved properly in public, knowing your place yet unconscious of your bonds. In turn, people also knew and accepted you for what you were; slaves. Tomorrow you will be tested for the last time. If you pass you will go to this month's auction.'

 

 

 

Jeni thought she had never been so nervous in her life. It felt like all the school examinations she had ever sat rolled into one. For it was a sort of exam, and to pass it meant they had graduated from the House of Remnos as slaves fit to be sold on the open market.

A few months ago that idea would have seemed outrageous. Now it had become the most important thing in her life – to be a worthy slave. Rebecca, for all her assumption of self-confidence, shared her anxiety, and they spent a restless night together.

 

After breakfast they were taken before Takydis, who explained the rules of the test.

‘You will each face the same challenges, all of which your training should enable you to accomplish, but you will do so individually. The order you go in is not significant. You will be observed at all times, whether you are aware of it or not. It is not a race, but you will be expected to complete your allotted tasks without wasting unnecessary time. You will be separated now, and not be allowed together again until you have all taken the test.'

Sak and Darro took them down to a corridor of tiny isolation cells adjoining the deprivation cage room, and put each of them in a separate compartment.

Jeni spent the time pacing up and down nervously, unable to rest. The heavy door shut out all sounds from the rest of the House. How long before her turn came? Who had gone already? What if she failed and Rebecca passed?

When she had almost convinced herself she had been forgotten, the door opened. ‘Let's have you, girl,' Darro said.

 

Jeni looked down at the people passing in the street below her. Her mouth was dry, yet she had to speak. It was her first test. She cleared her throat.

‘Citizens...' she called out, and a few faces looked up at her curiously. She had to do this! ‘Citizens of Ceroth. May I present myself to you? I am a sample of the quality merchandise the House of Remnos has to offer. Just for today, to prove my worthiness to serve, I can be tried freely by three fortunate citizens. Who shall it be?'

Jeni felt a dizzy elation infuse her. She was inviting total strangers to have sex with her! She saw one man, wearing the tunic colours of the artisan class, looking up at her with more than passing interest and focused on him.

‘You, master, can you not spare a little time to try me? The gate below is as open as my legs. Just walk up to sample the hospitality of the finest slave house in Ceroth. I'm so helpless in these chains. I can't touch myself and I'm feeling so empty, I really need a man inside me.'

With a nod and a grin, the man stepped through the gate below Jeni.

Immediately the outer shutters closed across the window and the circular frame that supported the grille hinged inwards, taking her with it. By the time the man had been led through the courtyard by a house slave and shown into the little room behind the display window, Jeni was facing into the room and the grille had tilted back at forty-five degrees.

The man's face lit up as he saw Jeni enticingly spread-eagled. She lifted her hips to show her readiness, feeling her sex opening with blatant need. The house slave hardly had time to leave the room before the man was pulling off his tunic and lunging onto Jeni.

After a few seconds' frantic fumbling his stiffening cock found her cunt and he crammed himself into her. Jeni grunted as her buttocks were squeezed against the unyielding bars of the grille, but the discomfort only heightened her arousal. Her internal muscles closed on the pistoning shaft, trying to draw pleasure from its sweet friction. The man came too quickly for Jeni to reach a climax, but she rode his shudders as he ejaculated and accepted the blossom of his sperm inside her with moans and sighs of her own, and broken words of gratitude.

‘Oh, thank you, master. That was so wonderful. You have ploughed my furrow well and planted your seed deep,' she said, using a traditional Elysian phrase she had learned. ‘Now there are drinks in another room. Please leave me. I must stay here and recover from such lusty use.'

As soon as the man had gathered his clothes and been escorted out, the house slave flushed Jeni clean, wiped her down with a damp cloth, gave a her a quick kiss of encouragement, and then pressed a button on the wall. The outer shutters opened and the grille swung Jeni back into the window frame where the passing populace could look up at her chained and naked body once again.

‘Citizens of Ceroth,' she called down to them, ‘may I offer myself to you?'

The next man she enticed up pinched her hot red nipples as he fucked her and she came wildly even before he had finished. The last of her three was a woman wearing the gown of an independent lady.

The woman did not rush to couple with Jeni but examined and stroked her body first, then kissed her deeply with arrogant assurance, which neither of the men had done. Only then did she slip off her gown and lie between Jeni's legs. Jeni thought she might ask for the frame to be tilted back so they could couple orally, but the woman rubbed her hips into Jeni's groin so that their pubic hair whispered together. With a start Jeni felt a clitoris almost the size of her little finger standing erect from the folds of the woman's cleft. The pleasure organ slid through Jeni's furrow and teased her own excited clitoris. Their slippery clefts kissed and sucked as the woman steadily rode Jeni to her second orgasm of the day, and even though Jeni begrudged the time it took, she would not have missed the experience for anything.

After the woman left Takydis appeared and ordered Jeni released from the grille. ‘You will have a few minutes to recover before the next part of your test,' he told her.

 

Jeni stood erect in the courtyard holding a tray of china beakers on her head. A short chain, allowing her only enough movement to grasp the sides of the tray if she held her arms high, linked her wrists. Her ankles were similarly hobbled. Her task was simple enough: to walk at a steady pace from one end of the courtyard to the other and place the tray on a small table without dropping anything.

Sak and Darro stood on either side of the path she would have to walk, each holding a leather tasselled switch and a light cane. Takydis stood to one side, presiding over the test.

‘Commence,' he said.

As Jeni stepped forward the men moved with her, swinging their sticks. Jeni winced and bit her lip as the lengths of cane and leather curled about her defenceless body, but she looked neither right nor left, focusing only on the table that was her goal, moving with the tiny shuffling steps that were all her chains permitted.

The weapons did not have enough weight behind them to physically upset her, but they were capable of delivering stinging blows that might make her flinch disastrously. It was that pain she had to fight. Or perhaps accept.

Thin red lines were glowing into life on the soft skin of her buttocks and belly and front of her thighs. Her raised arms exposed her breasts to strikes from above, ahead and underneath, and they bounced and jiggled with each thin smack of cane on flesh, her nipples perversely erect as usual as their supporting globes turned crimson. Though she knew the marks would fade in a few hours it felt like they were on fire, and a whimper escaped her lips.