that part of Edera longed to feel the power of a man covering her the way she saw the knights who came to visit their fillies covering them. There were the informal mountings in the stalls, when a knight simply opened the door of his filly’s stall and stepped inside, and then all the other fillies heard the sounds of a stallion mastering his mare. Sometimes through the stall windows, Edera caught glimpses of that, and it always made her heart beat very fast: the man, usually having merely raised his robe, pounding his hips into the girl’s bottom while she cried out. Once Edera had heard a knight say, “Oh, so tight,” and it had made her wonder, as the wetness came to her loins yet again, whether the man who mounted her for the first time would say that about her own little cleft.
There were the mountings in the yard, too, which were more formal. They took place during morning and evening exercises in the hidden palace yard behind the imperial residence. While the rest of the fillies trotted around the rings on the longe lines held by their trainers—Lord Ranin, always, for Edera, but Master Morqan or one of the twenty stable boys for the others—the girls whose mounting day it was went one at a time over the device fixed in the center of the yard, called the mounting saddle. Edera could not look at the mounting saddle, a sort of curve-topped leather-covered bench to which girls were strapped down by the stable boys, without blushing crimson, but she also envied the girls who rode it and were ridden there by the lords, while other men watched and jested, and the maids from the palace knelt in front of them and took their manhoods into their mouths.
And, she knew, there was the arena, where Edera thought mounting must make part of the mysterious displays. One evening a week—fifth day, which in Maq marked the end of each week—a few of the fillies were led away by the trainers to the arena, but none of the Amidians had ever dared to ask them where it was, or what happened there, nor did those girls ever volunteer the information during morning break. They usually had lash marks on their rumps when they returned, but that of course represented nothing unusual, really. Sometimes Edera thought that the girls who had been to the arena looked distracted the next day, as if trying to emerge from a vivid dream, but perhaps that simply came from being kept awake late into the night; the fillies never got back to the stable until everyone else had already fallen asleep.
“Filly Edera,” Lord Ranin said quietly, stroking her back gently at the same time and calling her away thus from her little reverie. “I cannot let you think that this strange life the emperor has thrust upon us is something to take lightly, and you have been dreadful on the longe line for the past three days. I must teach you that as your trainer I will not tolerate you giving less than your best.”
Oh, but if only he knew why, Edera thought. If only he knew that the reason she couldn’t keep her gait properly was that the more Lord Ranin trained her patiently—the more forbearance he showed in not touching her up with the quirt he wore at his waist like all the stable men—the less she could concentrate on pleasing him. She felt overwhelmed with guilt every time he put her into harness and led her out to the ring. When the training began and he took her from walk to trot, which should have been the easiest thing in the world, the past two sessions she had gone to canter instead, but Lord Ranin had not touched her with the quirt. Indeed, Lord Ranin had never touched her with the quirt.
Chapter Eleven
“Edera,” Ranin said, looking down at her lovely round bottom, free of the tail and so beautiful that he wondered yet again, as he had been wondering all night, whether he could actually do the terrible thing he had decided he must do, after that afternoon’s disaster in the ring. A few moments before, he had said that he thought he
There were the mountings in the yard, too, which were more formal. They took place during morning and evening exercises in the hidden palace yard behind the imperial residence. While the rest of the fillies trotted around the rings on the longe lines held by their trainers—Lord Ranin, always, for Edera, but Master Morqan or one of the twenty stable boys for the others—the girls whose mounting day it was went one at a time over the device fixed in the center of the yard, called the mounting saddle. Edera could not look at the mounting saddle, a sort of curve-topped leather-covered bench to which girls were strapped down by the stable boys, without blushing crimson, but she also envied the girls who rode it and were ridden there by the lords, while other men watched and jested, and the maids from the palace knelt in front of them and took their manhoods into their mouths.
And, she knew, there was the arena, where Edera thought mounting must make part of the mysterious displays. One evening a week—fifth day, which in Maq marked the end of each week—a few of the fillies were led away by the trainers to the arena, but none of the Amidians had ever dared to ask them where it was, or what happened there, nor did those girls ever volunteer the information during morning break. They usually had lash marks on their rumps when they returned, but that of course represented nothing unusual, really. Sometimes Edera thought that the girls who had been to the arena looked distracted the next day, as if trying to emerge from a vivid dream, but perhaps that simply came from being kept awake late into the night; the fillies never got back to the stable until everyone else had already fallen asleep.
“Filly Edera,” Lord Ranin said quietly, stroking her back gently at the same time and calling her away thus from her little reverie. “I cannot let you think that this strange life the emperor has thrust upon us is something to take lightly, and you have been dreadful on the longe line for the past three days. I must teach you that as your trainer I will not tolerate you giving less than your best.”
Oh, but if only he knew why, Edera thought. If only he knew that the reason she couldn’t keep her gait properly was that the more Lord Ranin trained her patiently—the more forbearance he showed in not touching her up with the quirt he wore at his waist like all the stable men—the less she could concentrate on pleasing him. She felt overwhelmed with guilt every time he put her into harness and led her out to the ring. When the training began and he took her from walk to trot, which should have been the easiest thing in the world, the past two sessions she had gone to canter instead, but Lord Ranin had not touched her with the quirt. Indeed, Lord Ranin had never touched her with the quirt.
Chapter Eleven
“Edera,” Ranin said, looking down at her lovely round bottom, free of the tail and so beautiful that he wondered yet again, as he had been wondering all night, whether he could actually do the terrible thing he had decided he must do, after that afternoon’s disaster in the ring. A few moments before, he had said that he thought he
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