Opportunities

Five: Come On, Girl

So, Bravil.

Bravil was a dump. It was a random array of poorly built wooden shacks, even the largest buildings, and its part of the Niben Bay was murky and smelled faintly of sewage. On one hand, I imagined it would be easy to get away with almost anything here – the city guard seemed rather inattentive. On the other hand, I couldn’t imagine that anyone here was worth robbing.

This was where the Gray Fox wanted me, rather than in the Imperial City, because of my “particular set of talents.” Maybe he hadn’t been so impressed with me after all.

When I reached S’krivva’s house the door was unlocked, but it was dark inside. I stepped in and called her name, and a gravelly voice answered. “Ah. The prey approaches.”

I stopped dead in my tracks. That was a greeting used by both Argonians and Khajiit, and it was not a friendly one. “I’m Luminara,” I said. “The Gray Fox sent me.”

“Yes. I expected you.” She emerged quietly from the darkness, a golden lioness in a red dress. “You’re to be trained to bigger jobs, more guarded places. And you’re to be kept clear of Fathis Ules and his little faction.”

The Gray Fox had paid more attention to my misgivings than I’d thought. “You know that?”

“I know many things.” She looked down her feline nose at me proudly. “You think you have been punished, tucked away in this miserable backwater. In fact I am the most powerful doyen in the Guild. I am supplier to the Count and his son. I own Bravil.” She gave what I supposed was a chuckle. “Fathis Ules will stay clear of me. Filthy Dunmer.”

I wondered if she had ever lived in Morrowind. That was where the antipathy between the Khajiit and the Dunmer was strongest.

“I already have a little work for you,” she added, “if you think you’re ready.” I nodded. “Good. We have a friend named Ahdarji – her late husband was a fence in the Guild. Some filthy little street scavenger stole a ring from her, and she is offering a reward for its return.”

Street scavenger was what some Guild members called freelancers. I nodded again, uncomfortably. I became less comfortable yet when she told me that Ahdarji was in Leyawiin. Great, I could stay at the Mages’ Guild and visit with my mother some more. Or perhaps instead I could gouge my own eyes out with rusty nails.

Of course I said I’d go right away. S’krivva didn’t seem like someone I wanted to get off on the wrong foot with.

Happily, I got to Leyawiin early enough in the day to seek Ahdarji out first, which put off the decision about whether I was really going to sleep at the Guild hall. She was another Khajiit, and she was livid. A mere Argonian had taken her ring.

Amusei, as it turned out.

He’d already been arrested for something else, but she wasn’t satisfied with that: she wanted the ring back, and she wanted him dead. I had to remind her of the policy against killing, and she agreed to take off that part, though reluctantly. “He’s only an Argonian,” she pointed out. “Less than human, and much less than Khajiit.”

Nice. Nice kitty.

I went and threw some money and flattering smiles at the prison guard so he would let me visit the prisoners. I ignored the lecherous cries of the other inmates and went directly to the cell of the lost-looking Argonian.

“Luminara, right?” he said, rising to meet me. “How funny you showed up here! Did you make it into the Guild?”

“Say it a little louder,” I frowned, my voice low. “Yeah, I did. You never came back, did you? Armand said he would have let you try again.”

“I don’t need Armand,” he snapped. “I don’t need the Guild.”

“No, you’re right, you’re doing great on your own. What are you in for, by the way?”

He sighed. “Blackmailing the Countess. I stole this ring, you see, and my fence wouldn’t touch it. Because it was hers – it said “To Alessia” inside and everything. So I tried to sell it back to her, and, well. She doesn’t play nice with Argonians.”

Nor with thieves who tried to sell her back her own property. Poor, stupid Amusei.

“Do you have a lockpick I could borrow?” he whispered as I turned to leave. I glanced around, then pulled one from my hair and gave it to him. “Thank you,” he grinned. “I owe you.” As if I was ever going to need anything from him.

I pondered the problem of stealing “back” Ahdarji’s ring, which was now the problem of robbing the Countess of Leyawiin. Not that I had an issue with the principle, but the job had just gotten considerably more challenging, and I wasn’t sure how to approach it. I went into the castle during public hours to have an initial look around.

Mazoga was there, and when she saw me she – well, made the face that Orcs make when they’re happy. “We” had been given an assignment by the Count, and by “we” she meant the Knights Errant of the White Stallion, by which she meant herself and me. “We” were to apprehend or eliminate the leader of the Black Bow Bandits, for which “we” would be rewarded with the full status of Knights, including a lodge.

I’d be helping out a friend and getting a place to sleep in Leyawiin that didn’t put me with my mother. What could be better?

She had already become familiar with Black Brugo’s routine: he collected his take from his gang nightly at a nearby Ayleid ruin.

Naturally, that meant the rest of the bandits were there earlier.

As we approached, just before we were spotted, I was thinking how much better it would be if I had any skill with a bow: I could have climbed up onto one of the ledges and shot down at the bandits from relative safety. I’d never bothered to learn, although it was one of the things Othrelos knew how to do well. Even though I knew he was good, he wasn’t enthusiastic about either doing it himself or teaching me. We’d always focused on breaking and entering.

So it was just me and my sword, and Mazoga, and the creepy white ruin, and bandits. Not many, luckily.

When we’d taken them down, Mazoga said, “He’ll be inside. Watch out for him, he hits hard.”

“You seem to know a lot about him.”

Her eyes darted away from me. “Well. Yeah. He and I used to – um, yeah.”

Ah. “Is this job going to make you uncomfortable?”

“Oh, no. He was a jerk.”

Since Mazoga was no good at sneaking anyway, I made light for us. That attracted the other bandits as we made our way through the ruin, but happily, she was also a good fighter.

We found the chest in which they’d put Brugo’s take before we found Brugo. “We, ah – ” I wanted to be tactful with Mazoga. “The Count won’t need the money. You don’t mind if I use it to pay my friend’s debt, do you?”

Mazoga thought for a moment. “I guess not. It’s not like they’ll know whose it was to give it back. But we’ll have to wait for him to bring the key.”

“I can – ” Oops, no, I couldn’t. Not as far as Mazoga knew, and it was probably best to keep it that way. “I can wait.” I looked at her as she stood right in the doorway. “We’ll probably want to wait for him in, you know, a less obvious spot. Hide until he gets here.”

“Oh,” she said, and let me lead her into the shadows.

Brugo was burly even for an Orc, and escorted by two other bandits. Brugo went after Mazoga first, and the other two came to me. They weren’t especially skilled fighters, though, so I managed to cut them both down and come to help Mazoga. A good thing, because Brugo wasn’t going down half as easily: it took the two of us several good blows each before he fell. Blasted daedric armor was hard to cut through.

It was going to fetch a good price, though, even damaged. And his glass sword was lovely. I thought I might even keep it for myself.

Mazoga had been the one in front of him, and she was hurt – a cut to her shoulder. I pulled a potion out of her sack for her, and she nodded and drank it. I stripped Brugo of valuables, and his key.

“I’ll carry the bows from the rest of them,” she said once she was better. “Count said he would pay us a bounty for them.”

Why hadn’t she mentioned that before? Now we’d have to check all the bodies on the way back out. I shrugged and used the key – artless though that was – to get Brugo’s money. Three hundred. I was closing in on having the debt paid in full.

It turned out that the “Black Bow Bandits” really did have black bows. We collected half a dozen of them as we retraced our steps. By morning we staggered wearily into the castle and presented them to the Count, Marius Caro, a balding little man who looked ludicrous in the amount of velvet and fur he was wearing.

He was thrilled with us, though, and named us Knights, and gave us keys to the lodge, and paid us another three hundred septims each for the bows, with a promise of more if we brought in more bows. Mazoga beamed at the prospect: I could easily imagine her making a living at killing bandits from now on and being happy.

But I had other things to think about, and besides, that was the moment when I got to meet the Countess of Leyawiin. She strolled in haughtily with her Altmeri handmaiden in tow, as lavishly dressed as her husband but looking less ridiculous. In fact she was a reasonably attractive brunette, although nothing spectacular. As the Count explained us to her, she looked first and longest at me, with calculated indifference. Then she glanced over at Mazoga, and her expression became one of scorn, and that spread back to me by association.

“Wonderful that we’re re-establishing the Knighthood, darling,” she drawled, a false smile playing across her face. “You will both have to join us at the Chapel sometime. We go to the evening service. I’m sure you will both find something…more appropriate to wear.”

Oh, yes. I could steal the ring back from her. My pleasure.

But there was still the problem of how. I decided I would take her up on her invitation, and see if I could find out any more about her usual routines and the location of the ring. I used a little of my considerable profits to get a nice dress, and then I went to take a nap at the lodge. As I settled in, I thought about Othrelos. Adding in what we’d gotten together in Skingrad, I was sure I could pay him in full the next time I saw him.

Would he keep coming to meet me after that? Where was it he was spending all his time now, anyway?

I’d picked a black dress. Black dress, gray hair. Drama. I wanted to strike my audience as someone who cleaned up nicely and was worth engaging in conversation. In the evening, I put it on and went to the Chapel of Zenithar. The Count and Countess turned and smiled politely when I entered. I sat a few rows back, with the handmaiden.

Her name was Hlidara, and she was an easier friend to make than her lady. She told me they were just back from a visit to Chorrol: the Countess there was Alessia’s mother. She shared her relief about the return of the beloved ring, which Alessia only took off at night.

I kept coming to Chapel. Not every evening, since I didn’t want to be too obvious, but more evenings than not. Hlidara opened up to me. She confided her discomfort with the “severe immigration policy” in Leyawiin regarding Black Marsh, the native home of the Argonians. She didn’t entirely approve of the interrogation techniques used on captured immigrants, or understand her lady’s fascination with them. She never used the passage that linked the torture chamber in the cellar to the living quarters. Still, she was sure the Count and Countess knew best.

She said it all with a peculiar little smile that made me skeptical. Her eyes lit up a little too much at the mention of torture for me to think she didn’t approve or participate, and not for political reasons, either.

No…she was measuring my response. Looking me over. I made my face bland, so as to neither alarm her by taking too much offense nor encourage her to invite me – well. Then again.

I flickered my eyes downward shyly, let the corners of my mouth creep up just a tiny bit.

She breathed a little heavier. “Of course,” she whispered, “it’s true that some people engage in that sort of thing for entirely different reasons.”

I raised my eyes only as far as her mouth. “I imagine that’s true. I wonder what it’s like.” I decided to take a little more risk, to play through my guess that the gleam in her eye was a sadistic one. “To let someone hurt you, on purpose.”

“Some people like it very much,” she smiled. “I hear.”

It only took one more visit to the Chapel to get a more direct confession that she knew this as the person who did the hurting – of the Countess herself, among others – and that she was quite willing to initiate me into the practice. She arranged our date in the castle’s torture chamber and told me where the secret entrance from the cellar was. Perfect.

I hid my sack in a barrel in the cellar, since it wouldn’t do to have Hlidara see it and ask about it. In another barrel was the switch for the secret door, and I moved cautiously down the passage. I didn’t want to be seen before I knew everything was as it should be.

I needn’t have worried. All the shackles on the wall were currently empty, there were no guards, and the only person waiting for me was Hlidara, in a more extreme version of the fashion she preferred: a tight shirt with a band just under her bust to accentuate her shape, and a straight skirt. This particular shirt was tighter and lower cut than the ones she wore to Chapel, so as to reveal what she had of cleavage, although she was tall and lean rather than rounded. Her skin was pale for an Altmer, even milky.

She greeted me with a predatory smile. “So you didn’t lose courage at the last moment. Excellent.” She kissed me lightly. “Now,” she whispered, “let’s get you out of those bothersome clothes and into some shackles.”

“No shackles,” I said. I didn’t trust her that much: I didn’t want to disappear forever in this hole.

She traced a finger teasingly along my jaw. “But you would like them. The Countess likes them.”

I answered with a coy smile. “The Countess lives here. This is only my first time.”

She ran the finger down the center of my chest and belly, her eyes following. “Well. It means you’ll have to follow instructions very carefully, dear little girl. We wouldn’t want anyone getting hurt in the wrong way.”

I nodded, and she stepped back from me. “Get undressed, then. Slowly.”

She’d told me to wear something easy to remove, so I was in a two-piece red outfit. I opened the shirt and slowly eased it down over my shoulders, eyes down as if I was feeling bashful. I knew how this sort of game was played. She watched with a growing hunger in her eyes as I slipped out of the skirt and then ran my hands slowly up my hips as if I’d never noticed them before.

She licked her lips and smiled a little. “Now, over to the wall.” I complied, and she approached and ran her hands over me, assessing. I gave her an encouraging little sigh when she pinched my nipples, and she smiled wider as I started to shiver. The shiver was genuine: it was cold in the chamber, and the Altmer woman towered over me. The whole atmosphere was orchestrated to make me feel helpless and under her sexual power, and it was working.

“Pinch them yourself,” she said, and I raised my hands to my breasts for her. I rubbed at them and watched her watching me, and I could feel myself starting to breathe faster.

“Don’t stop,” she ordered, and walked away from me for a moment, returning with a tool in each hand. “What do you think – single tail, or the crop?”

Looking at the implements of my destruction while fondling myself for show was rather arousing, and it was hard to collect myself enough to answer quickly. “Which one does the Countess prefer?”

“The single tail.”

“Then I would like the crop.”

She lashed the single tail once against the floor, and the snap echoed around us. “From this point forward you will call me Mistress, and you will say please.”

Oh, she was good at this. “The crop, please, Mistress.”

She dropped the single tail with a chuckle. “You don’t like the Countess, do you?”

“Does anyone, Mistress?”

She sneered. “No. Turn around and put your hands on the wall.” I did so, and she came up close behind me. “Spread your legs a little.” When they were parted, she reached up between them with the crop and brushed the tip against me gently. Then she tapped it a few times against the insides of my thighs. That seemed to wake up the whole area in a very appealing way, and I sighed with pleasure.

“That’s it,” she purred. “You’ve got lovely pale skin, my dear. Let’s give it a little color.” She gave my ass a quick, light smack with the crop, making me gasp. That was followed by a long series of moderate strokes, switching now and again from one side to the other. Her pace and strength were quite even, but all the same the sensation moved from tingling to stinging, and then to burning. I leaned my forehead against the wall, panting.

There was the slightest pause, and then the next blow came much harder, a loud, painful slap. I cried out through my clenched teeth, and she paused again.

“You’re a biter, then,” she said. “Here.” She reached around my face with a twisted kerchief, nudged my mouth open, and wedged it between my jaws. I felt her tie the ends behind my neck to hold it in place, forcing my mouth to remain open.

“There. You can bite, and I can hear you better. Don’t be shy, now.” With that, she delivered another hard smack, one I could hear even over my own yelp. The twisted fabric in my mouth was thick enough that my bite could not flatten it, and my lips stayed open and stretched, letting her hear the sounds she wanted. No more “please” and “Mistress,” though, with my tongue trapped. Just the cries as she beat me.

The last few strikes were brutal ones. And yet, the pain also continued to feed the happier response of other flesh nearby, and I was trembling as much with arousal and longing as with pain.

Finally she stopped, and raked her nails slowly down my back. “Lovely,” she said. Her nails came to the skin she had been abusing, and I gave a loud gasp that made her giggle.

“Lie down on the floor,” she ordered. That involved sitting first. Ow, ow, ow. I laid back on the cold stone as quickly as I could, hoping to take off some of the pressure, but that was only of limited help, and my eyes started to water. I lifted myself up a little bit with my feet, but she pushed me back down flush on the ground, then pulled my knees apart and knelt between them.

She had discarded the crop and picked up the single tail whip, holding the thick end of the handle forward. “Now, little one,” she smiled, “I’d like to see you come. Make yourself come for me.”

I snaked one hand down toward my clit, and she nodded in approval. As I started to rub, she slid the handle of the whip into me and started working it back and forth, and I bucked my hips up again and moaned. I was already worked up, and it was hard to control myself enough to keep my fingers moving, but she stared down at me insistently, fucking me with her weapon. My arms and legs shook, and I arched back and started screaming and sobbing.

“Stop,” she said, and pulled the handle out of me, stroking it along my thigh before she put the whip aside. She sat and watched me as the shaking and sobbing gradually faded, with a peaceful and satisfied look on her face.

“Did you like that?” she asked. I nodded. “You’ll find it easier to get up from your stomach.” After I rolled over and lifted myself onto my knees, she untied the kerchief, and I let it fall to the floor, cold and wet. Closing my lips again felt alien.

She continued to watch and smile as I slowly put my clothes back on. “I think you could have handled the single tail, actually. Perhaps another time.”

After a few other idle, out-of-place pleasantries, I staggered back the way I had come and into the shadows in the cellar. There I would sit – no, stand – and wait for a couple of hours. Then I collected my sack from its hiding place and crept back up to the chamber again, then through the passage up to the private quarters of the darling Countess. She turned out to have lots of pretty jewelry besides the ring.

I sold most of it to Dar Jee, my new official fence, for the sake of appearances, although I saved a couple of things for Weebam Na to stave off my feelings of disloyalty. Then I took the ring to Ahdarji, who both paid me and promised glowing reviews of my performance to S’krivva.

That meant I was free to leave Leyawiin again, for which I was deeply grateful.