To The Princess Bound (7 page)

“Like the one just now, with the man cutting open your blouse.  When did they start?”

Victory froze, every muscle in her body going utterly still.  She twisted slowly on the floor, then carefully got to her feet, every single hair on her body prickling with goosebumps as she turned back to look at the slave.

The man was sitting up, watching her.

“You’re a Psi,” she whispered, on a surge of horror.  She backed to the end of the tether, staring at him. 

The man nodded, slowly, blue eyes searching hers.

Her breath tightened in her chest.  Long-term space travel—jumps, in particular—produced strange effects on stored embryos and sperm, and the original colonists to Mercy, over five hundred years ago, had found their destination planet to be uninhabitable, and had struck out on a desperate-man’s voyage deep into the galaxy back when long-term space travel was still a new and dangerous frontier.  Consequently, when they by chance found a rocky planet with a habitable atmosphere, they dipped heavily into the cryogenic genetics database to help replace the numbers they had lost on the voyage. 

Due to that, Mercy had left an overabundance of Psi, as well as Kin, Shi, and other unnatural human-base mutations.  Once the original Liberated Assemblage of Planets sponsoring the colonies failed, almost four hundred and fifty years ago, Mercy was left to survive on its own, and the Psis were allowed to reproduce in the gene pool.  When the Imperium emerged, three hundred and fifty years after that, it began re-claiming the colonies that had survived.

Then, once the jump-mutations were recognized, the Imperium had given every sub-Empire orders to exterminate on sight.  Eliminating Psis and other human-base mutations had been the Imperium’s first order of business, once her father had landed with his fleet.  Psi natives had been hunted for decades.  They thought they had got them all. 

Victoria, seeing a way to remove the man from her belt permanently, opened her mouth to scream for the guards.

She saw the man’s blue eyes drop, saw the resignation in his face.

He just put his life in my hands.

Victory hesitated, frowning at him.  Softly, she said, “You know I could have you killed.”

He gave her a tired, tentative smile.  “Princess, from the looks of things, you could have me killed at any time.” 

Instinctively, Victory glanced at the nick in his throat left by the Praetorian’s blade.  It was still oozing a slow line of crimson down his neck. 

She bit her lip, once again glancing at the door. 
If I have them take him away,
she thought,
Father would just find someone else.

And a Psi was…

…
interesting
.  She had always wanted to meet one.  As children, she and Matthias had planned to go out and capture a Psi and bring him back to be their playmate.  Their father, upon hearing of their plans, had been furious, and had claimed that, had the Imperium learned of their antics, it would have had them both removed as Adjudicator Potentiates.  Speaking of Psis—or any of their genetic kin—had been absolutely forbidden from that point on, which had only made her and Matthias more determined to find one.

And now she had one, not eight feet away.  The only problem was that his every move made six years of terror stir within her.

He started to get up, exposing more of his big body to her.

Victory quickly huddled down behind the bed again.  “Stay where you are!”

On the other side of the massive bed, the Psi stilled.  Victory listened to his breathing, watching his knees under the bed.  After another twenty minutes passed, he said, “Princess, if you’re not going to have me killed, I need to relieve myself.  I’ve been holding it since this morning.”

Victory closed her eyes and drew herself into a fetal position on the floor.  She had been dreading this.  The lavatory was immense, the toilet located a good ten feet inside the doorway, trapping her inside with him.  She said nothing, hoping that his urge would go away.

“This is a very nice rug,” the man commented.

Victory winced.  Slowly, carefully, she sat up and peered over the mattress at him.  She swallowed at the thought of crossing it, once more leaving nothing but chain between them. 

“Are you really a Psi?” she whispered, searching his cerulean eyes.  Somehow, with their bodies hidden from each other by the bed, it was easier to cope with his presence.

His face twisted in a strained smile.  “A Psi that’s about to pee himself.”

A third of her wanted to tell him to pee—that she wasn’t going to get anywhere near him.  Another third of her didn’t want to deal with the smell of urine until one of her maids came to clean it up.  The last third was caught between the horror of seeing his body again, and the horrible bad form of not even giving him a proper place to relieve himself.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” the man said softly.  “I can’t.”  He jingled the shackles holding his arms behind his back.

Of course he could.  A Psi could destroy one’s thoughts, change one’s memories, speak inside the mind…

Then a more disturbing thought occurred to her. 
A man doesn’t need his arms to hold a woman down and use her
.

“Is there a chamberpot on your side?” the man asked, desperation in his voice.  “You can just slide it over to my side of the bed and I’ll make do.”

Victory frowned, struck from that thought by the barbarian’s provinciality.  “This is a civilized household.  We have a composting toilet.”

The Psi whimpered and dropped his head to the bed, face down.  “I’m gonna have to pee the rug, aren’t I?”

Victory gnashed her lip between her teeth, considering.  Finally, she said, “I’m going to come over there.”  Then, as his head darted up in gratitude, she growled, “But don’t
move
until I’m on the other side.”

He nodded, his blue eyes pleading.

Victory swallowed and started to crawl over the bed, but stopped when more of his body was revealed.  She shrank back, fear and dread wrenching her gut.

The Psi said nothing, just remained absolutely still, like a woodsman trying to tame a wild animal.  “Would it help if I looked away?” he asked softly.

He knows I’m afraid of him,
Victory thought, fighting humiliation.  She was a
princess
and he was a
slave
and she couldn’t come within six feet from him without bawling like a terrified child.

She yanked a sheet off of the bed and threw it over him, so that it covered his face, head, and body.  He remained motionless, a black mound of embroidered cloth.

“Stay there,” Victory said, hating the trembling in her voice. 

He nodded against the sheet.

She bit her lip, watching the fabric move with his breathing.  It didn’t hide what it concealed, but at least it made it easier to stomach.  Reluctantly, Victory began crawling across the bed.  The last two feet before the other side, with the man’s big body only a couple feet away, her nerves finally failed her and she made a panicked scramble, lunging to her feet and hitting the end of the chain, hard.

The man grunted, but otherwise remained silent.

“Get up,” Victory managed, every nerve humming.  “Leave the sheet where it is.”

“I don’t know how well it will stay on,” the Psi said, “But I can try.”  He eased backwards over his feet, then stood up.

Victory gasped.  She had forgotten how big he was.  “Get low,” she babbled, looking away.  “Gods…”  She stared at the floor, feeling like she was going to vomit.

He hunched under the sheet, so it looked like he was barely taller than she.  “Better?” he asked.

“Much,” she whispered, trying to keep her utter gratitude from showing.  She looked at the door to the lavatory, her heart-rate already starting that frenzied climb.  “Follow me.”  She led him, shuffling and hunched under his sheet, to the restroom.  She opened the door, and only then did she realize her problem.  The toilet was far in the back, near the large stone basin tub.  She could let him step inside first, but then he would have no idea where to go with the sheet over his head.  And she was not about to take his hand and guide him.

The second problem was that the toilet seat lid was down, the room ever-so-thoughtfully maintained by her household staff.

If she led him into the room to lift the seat, she would be trapping herself.  A spike of terror began worming its way through her gut as she considered being pinned against the wall by his massive body while he—

“I just want to pee,” he promised.  “I don’t care where or how at this point.”

She flinched, glancing back at the lump of sheet. 
He can read my mind,
she thought, unnerved.  Then, biting her lip, she snatched a heavy golden mermaid-statue off of the shelf beside the door.  With it in a fist, she found the confidence to continue.  “I’m going to lead you in.  When I tell you to stop, you
stop
.  Understand?  You don’t, and I’m gonna cave your skull in.”

He nodded, a bobbing in the sheet.

Swallowing hard, Victory moved into the lavatory, pulling him with her.

He never stumbled, never slowed.  When he reached the shift from carpet to tiled stone, he didn’t flinch or hesitate.  He walked through the door and kept moving.

It’s almost like he can see through the sheet,
Victory thought, frowning.  As far as she knew, Psis couldn’t see or affect anything but another mind.

She backed to the toilet, then, still watching him carefully, squatted to lift the seat.  Then she backed up, crawled over the edge of the huge white marble tub, then climbed onto the shelf on the far side, against the wall, gripping the statue in a white-knuckled fist. 
You’re trapping yourself,
a frantic voice in her mind started to babble. 
You’ve got nowhere to run…

“Stop,” she said.

But he was already turning, and she watched as he squatted forward over the toilet, sheet blocking her view.  At the first sounds of liquid hitting the bowl, she swallowed and looked away.

  “Ohthankgods.”  The big man let out a huge sigh and thumped his sheet-covered forehead against the wall.

“Done?” Victory demanded, disgusted by her father’s cruelty.  When
she
was Adjudicator, she would make an Imperial decree that slaves could not be chained to living beings.  Such was barbarism of the highest degree.

“Yes,” he said, sounding utterly relieved.  “Thank you.”

“Turn around and walk out,” Victory snapped, to keep the desperation out of her voice.  What if he didn’t turn?  What if he didn’t obey her?  What if he decided to, instead, step into the bath with her and—

He turned and shuffled back towards the door.

Once he was well out of reach, Victory followed gingerly, but hesitated at the toilet, the thought of revisiting the whole nerve-wracking experience again in an hour making her feel sick.  And yet, the thought of performing a function so private, within eight feet of a naked man, left her nauseous.

The Psi, once the chain went taut between them, stopped.

Seeing him wait there, patiently, Victory made her decision.

 “Don’t turn around,” Victory whispered, her voice thick with shame.  She squatted and, as quickly as she could, finished her business, then sent the result to the composter.  She was shaking by the time she got back to her feet.

The Psi waited, motionless, hunched over as low as his big body could go without falling over.

“Back to the bed,” Victory said, too mortified to speak more than a whisper.

The Psi moved flawlessly towards the bed, then, without being told, knelt again on the floor at his side.

Once she was sure he wasn’t going to try and move, Victory rushed past him and flung herself across the bed, then dropped into a huddle on the other side.  She grabbed her ankles and, bringing her knees up under her chin, closed her eyes and started rocking against the images that began invading her consciousness from having come within arm’s reach.  Men, their big arms reaching out, with her chained, nowhere to run…

“They’re not real,” the man said softly, from under the sheet.  “They happened in another life.”

Victory’s eyes narrowed at the edge of the mattress.  “That’s where you’re wrong.”  She hadn’t meant to say it, and wasn’t sure she had, but she felt the man’s breath catch.

“Oh my gods,” he whispered.