Prologue: The Chronicler

The Queen singled me out from the rubble of girls that she had carried off from what was now a smouldering ruin, but used to be the, visually at least, resplendent city-state of Amberstrat. I didn't stand out from the rest, except perhaps in looking even more rugged. I was just the first to raise my hand when she asked if any among us knew how to read and write. I regretted my initiative as soon as my hand went up and her eyes fixed on me. During the siege, there were whispers that she had come to liberate us from the whorehouses and the slave arenas that were our destiny as foreign, destitute females. But, I thought as she motioned me to come forward, it might have been wishful thinking to believe these rumours - others insisted she was just here to abduct us for her own slave workforce and pleasure domes. She was after all known throughout the continent as the Whore Queen.

I approached her and she lifted my chin, preventing me from looking away as she gazed straight into my eyes. Forced to look at her face, I was surprised by what I saw. She was of course very pretty - but where I had expected to see a cold face with icy eyes piercing my soul, I saw a woman who sort of reminded me of the blacksmith's wife from back home. Her fiery hair and large hazel eyes prevented her from looking too intimidating even though she tried to look strict.

"Clean her and bring her to my tent," she ordered one of her guards and turned away. Her voice was deeper than I would have expected.

Two armoured figures grabbed me each by an arm and carried me away like a stick to a pavillion where I was stripped, and thrown into a wooden bathtub before being showered with barrels of lukewarm water emptied on me. I was then put into a simple but clean dress and carried the same way to a large - but not the largest in the camp as far as I could tell - tent. The guards threw me in and stood outside. The tent was empty for the time being. I was worried - what did she want with me? The forced bath made me think of various stories about what it meant to be in the service of the Whore Queen, but then again, she picked me solely for knowing reading and writing - clean or not, I was as attractive as a goat. I always thought my destiny in Amberstrat would have been one of the cheapest brothels, the ones where paying a little extra meant that a customer was free to return the merchandise in bad condition - or not at all.

Remembering this, I calmed down - nothing would be as bad. I checked out the tent. It contained a desk with a couple of chairs, two large chests that I assumed contained the Queen's attire, a small round table, and a bed, which was more like a pile of giant pillows. Three tall lantern posts would illuminate it at night.

"You might like to eat something," I heard that deep voice from behind me and jumped.

The Queen looked at me and forced herself to smile as she laid down a small tray on the table. She had dimples that would make her look cute when she wanted to - if she ever wanted to, which I was beginning to doubt. I glanced at the trey - it contained bread, some cheese, and dried meat. I fell on it.

"I have decided to write my memoirs," she declared. "Do you know what that is?"

I nodded. Before my ill-fated decision to cross the border, which landed me in the human bazaars of Amberstrat just days before the siege began, I had had a pretty decent education.

"My advisors suggested a number of respected scholars that I could turn to for that sort of thing, but it felt wrong. I am after all the Whore Queen. I rose from nothing, and it is fitting that my chronicler should be of the same mold."

She looked at me as if expecting confirmation. I nodded again, not knowing what else to do.

"Hrmph. Are you done with that?" she asked, pointing at the food that had vanished. I nodded a third time, still swallowing the last bite. I considered asking for more but didn't want to push my lack.

"Good. Sit at the desk and grab a pen. I hope you didn't lie about your skills - your inability to speak makes me wonder if you have understood a word I said."

I did as she asked and waited for her to begin. She looked at me thoughtfully.

"I wasn't that much older than you when I first sucked dick for a few tin coins - fuck, I was probably younger. I was poor - not quite that poor that I didn't have a choice, mind you. Not poor enough to worry much about food, but just so that I could not fulfill any more than my basic desires. I think I wanted to buy a pendant - that's how it started. A cheap thing, really, but pretty. And I couldn't afford it. So when the idea came to me, it seemed really simple and clever." She paused to make sure I was following and came to look over my shoulder checking if I was writing it down correctly. Content, she continued.

"I had left school by that point, but it was close to my house, and I could see the students leaving every day. I picked my target - some guy I knew already from my own time there - just because he was passing through an alley behind my house. I waited for him there 'accidentally' and started chatting. Once I saw he was looking down my chest, I told him I would suck his dick for a price. He accepted immediately. I had never sucked cock before, but I guess he was similarly inexperienced; I don't think it was my natural talent as a cocksucker that amazed him. In any case, he asked if I would be there again the next day, and I said sure, why not." Her eyes darkened at that last bit.

"Sorry," I interrupted, "but do you want me to edit that a bit?"

"She speaks!" she said sarcastically. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, you said 'suck his dick', then 'sucked cock', then 'cocksucker' in close succession. Maybe you want me to paraphrase a bit?" I hoped she wouldn't take this as criticism.

She frowned. "No. Yes. Maybe. Well, a little, as long as the essence is the same."

I motioned her to continue. She smiled a little less forcibly at my increased self-confidence.

"The next day, of course, he had told his friends. So five guys arrived from both sides of the alley, all leering at me. I could tell they were not here to ask for my services. One of them grabbed me and held my hands behind my back as the rest surrounded me. I did the only thing I could think of. I told them I would blow them all for ten tin coins each. That caught them by surprise. Two said that was double what their friend had paid the day before, the rest wondered why they should pay, at all when there was nothing I could do to stop them. I pointed out a willing blowjob would be more pleasant for them. That seemed to convince them. It was not more pleasant for me of course." She paused for a bit. "But it taught me how much power my tongue had. In all its functions. That was the beginning of my journey. I never went back to that alley, but I found another city corner where I offered blowjobs for two bronze coins, then for three, and eventually for five."

I had her repeat a couple of things as she had blurted a few of these sentences too rapidly.

"I'm sorry," I said. It felt correct.

She smiled, earnestly now. "Don't be. As soon as I gained a little power, I had them all killed."

Going on as if that was the most natural thing in the world, she said "I guess I got better - though in truth, my success was more due to local morals. Prudes they were, my countrymen, scared of the Black Priests' teachings against the pleasures of the flesh. I eventually found out that even the whores didn't use their mouths - which was the only part that I used, giving me a competitive advantage, I guess. Having grown up in the poorest neighbourhoods where the priests didn't enter often, and the people were less likely to give up their only source of joy, I was not imbued with their preconceptions."

I nodded in agreement - I grew up in a rural area, but I had the same impression: the poor fucked more freely, without needing to ponder the morality of it. I looked up to see why she had stopped talking.

"What about you, girl? Have you ever done it?" she asked, making a motion with her hand and mouth that had an obvious meaning but was most unbecoming of a queen, even one so named.

I blushed a little, but I thought it was only fair to answer. Yes, I had once sucked a boy back in the village, then a guard at the border to thank him for letting me through - little did I know. No, neither one was exciting. The boy had emptied his balls into my mouth almost immediately; just as he had done the next day when I offered a different part of me to him. The experience with the guard could have been nice if he hadn't been sweating in the sun all day.

She nodded. "That's the truth of it. Don't think I enjoyed it much more - but I started making money, lots of it, and that I did enjoy. I rented an apartment together with two friends I'd made; Juar was a messenger and his girlfriend Aru a seamstress. And yes, I fucked them both. They were my first real lovers, and taught me just how pleasurable sex can be - though I like to think I taught them quite a bit as well."

Her gaze became lost, for a moment, but she waived some intruding thoughts away. "Anyway. Long story short, I eventually started having regular clients among the members of the city's ruling council of nobles..."

"Sorry," I interrupted, "but long story short is not a phrase fitting a memoir."

"I see I picked the right girl. Let's just say this is the outline of the work; we will get into the details later. May I continue now, my lady?"

I ignored the sarcasm and said she may.

"I am not sure how the idea came to me. It wasn't power I was after, not at first. Just a desire to cause some unrest in the city. I'd see the same nobles who came to me with their dicks out, making more and more outlandish offers to house me somewhere and make me their private whore, contorting their faces in disgust when passing through the same streets in each other's company. And I decided to fuck with them.

The idea was stupid, frankly. When I knocked on the first door, asked for the lady of the house, and told her that her husband, respectable Council Member Tavaris, comes to me twice a week for a blowjob, she slapped me and slammed the door on my face. Still, I persevered and knocked on the next door, too. And this time, Council Member Adom's young wife thanked me for keeping her husband occupied so she didn't have to have sex with him that often and invited me in for tea."

"Did you fuck her?" I asked, sensing where this was going.

"Oh yes, naturally; I ended up eating her out on the kitchen table. I charged her less than her husband though, and she became a regular."

The Queen stopped pacing around the tent and sank into a chair. She was wearing simple leather pants and boots, a shirt, and had a sword strapped around her waist - she took off the belt holding the weapon and threw it on the bed when it got tangled in the chair. The only symbol of her position was a silver circlet on her head.

"By this stage, I had already established my own pleasure house," she said after putting her legs up on the desk where I was trying to keep up with her story, "Technically that was not allowed, and the Black Church tried to point that out to the Council, but no one wanted to displease the people and I was allowed to continue operating. I worked much less at that point, only servicing clients willing to pay my ridiculous fee -- of course, I offered more than head by now, but I was not worth those prices. There were girls at my establishment, and boys as a matter of fact, that were much more talented, but I had the status and the reputation. This had allowed me to approach more of the city's officials' wives -- and though I didn't bed most of them, a lot were glad for my existence; their husbands' open secrets allowed them to wield more power over them, or in some cases even pursue their own affairs. They invited me to high society events just to see their men squirm. So when I decided to run for one of the Council's three electable seats - the other twelve reserved for aristocrats, of course - those same wives' support prevented any objections. I won the election easily."

I grunted with disappointment. "Most of the stories I've heard speak of a disgruntled whore storming the city with an army of outlaws," I said. "Which, frankly, sounds like a better story than this. Your Grace." That last bit sounded inadvertently ironic, I realised.

She snorted. "I'm getting to that, you little shit." She stretched her left hand, grabbed a bottle from the floor, and put herself a cup of wine, offering none to me. "Truth be told, I didn't really plan to use my newfound, limited political power to bring about radical changes, but it must have been the last straw for the Church, cause soon after an envoy from the High Conclave came and warned the Council that this profanity would not stand. They wouldn't send the Legion, but they didn't have to; all the Church needed to do was threaten to direct merchant caravans away from the city. Faced with the prospect of trade shutting down, I was swiftly deposed, exiled, and thrown out of the walls without pomp or circumstance." Her face darkened. "That I could have stomached, but my friends and employees were not so lucky. Unfortunately for the Council, I had transferred most of my funds to the Stoneheart Bank, away from their, or the Church's, reach. That move gave me the resources to plan my revenge."

She got up from the chair she had thrown herself in. "But that can wait for tomorrow." Seeing my disappointment as I had been waiting with my mouth open for the good part of the story, she added: "Always leave them wanting more is good advice for most professions."

I protested. "OK, but I will need a preview at least -- for the outline, of course. What stories will we cover? There are many, and I bet half of them are not true."

"Oh? What have you heard?" Her thick eyebrow made a perfectly angled arch on her forehead.

"Frankly they're all variations of the same trope; you fuck your way from victory to victory. You submitted to Khonran the Savage so he would fight for you; you fought naked in the Golden Fields to boost your troops' morale; you took Hemmsburg from within by convincing the city's whores to murder the Dukes..."

"Partly true, all of them; but not quite. There's a twist in each of them. And many more stories to tell."

"You promised to let every last one of the Qereshi soldiers fuck you if they surrendered the city," I added, this being the most notorious story I knew.

"That one's true -- I did promise them." She winked at me. Clearly, that was a promise the idiotic Qereshi soldiers regretted believing. "But I said enough for today!" she suddenly boomed in fake anger and laughed when I jumped.

"What about the rest of the women you took from Amberstrat?" I asked after a minute. "What is to become of them?"

"They will be our guests in the camp for a couple of days. Then, they can choose their own path -- they are free to leave or stay. There's a lot of work they can do if they remain, and no, I don't mean that."

I felt relieved. The Whore Queen -- Queen Vandira, I corrected myself, I should try to be proper -- was turning out to be a decent person, at least compared to my recent experiences. My captors in Amberstrat had beaten me repeatedly, though they were careful not to leave marks that would lower my already-low value, and I had never talked back to them as I did to her.

"You have this option as well," Vandira continued. "But I think working as my chronicler will be easier and more rewarding -- you don't look like you can carry much, and I doubt you can fight. Maybe you cook?"

"I'd rather keep doing this, thanks. Thank you. Your Grace." This time, my tone carried genuine reverence. She seemed pleased.

"And then, there are other perks to working directly for the Queen, like access to my famous harem -- though I don't like the term since I am paying them well for their work and their services are not limited to me. I dare say it is the best diplomatic corps you can find."

I think I blushed obviously at that offer, and she noticed.

"Come," she said in a tone that I think she tried to make sound friendly. "Take a look at least."

She led me out of the tent and whispered something to one of the guards outside. It was one of the two that had carried and washed me, whom I only now realised was a woman. The Queen was right - this was the only job I could be good at. Neither manual labour nor fighting was my calling, and cooking was a hard skill to master when you rarely ate.

The guardwoman rang a bell three times and turned to me. "You can go to the large pavillion over there," she said pointing to the east border of the camp. "You'll find an assortment of options." She winked at me, and I felt my cheeks reddening again.

"You get a pick for every day you write for me," the Queen said. "We'll discuss your regular salary later. Be here tomorrow at noon." She turned her back and left. With my head bowed down as if every passerby would know where I was going and why and laugh at my gall, I reluctantly crossed the distance to the harem tent.

I expected to see a bunch of naked people sitting on pillows and eating grapes, but of course, this was still a war camp - the harem's service providers might be tasked with other jobs as well, and they would certainly not be expected to sit all day. The tent, much larger than the queen's, contained several dividing screens, and chests full of clothes and bedrolls, but was not luxurious. As I got in, people were still arriving from other entrances; apparently, the bell ringing called them to the tent or summoned messengers to gather them; they got in line, dusting off their clothes - some wore cooking aprons (but apparently weren't the main cooks, since they were here), some blacksmith ones, and two were clad in the white robes of the battle alchemy labs. About fifteen of them gathered; as I learned later the Queen's "diplomatic corps" contained at least fifty members, not counting the ones sent away on missions, but clearly not everyone was available all the time.

It didn't matter to me of course. As soon as they all lined up, I was unable to think straight. My heart was pounding. They all looked so beautiful, girls that you felt deserved altars to be worshipped at, men at whose feet the worshipped girls would collapse, and boys who looked pretty like girls but had a fire in their eye, promising dark desires; women in whose chest you could bury your face and be happy. More importantly, they all looked at me as if they were eager to please me. Me! Who had been told that I have a boy's ass which combined with my flat chest, 'might at least make you popular with some very particular brothel clients.' And that was before I fell into the hands of Amberstrat's slavers.

"First time here?" one of the girls asked. I nodded, and as she took my hand I felt I didn't deserve any of this. She introduced me to each of the people present, all of whom greeted me politely, proclaiming how glad they were I had been saved from that hellhole that was Amberstrat. The little I managed to say was that the Queen appointed me to write her memoirs and that I might have to ask them to verify some bits - that last was meant as a joke, but they agreed to help any way they could.

Having calmed a little, I pondered my options - I reminded myself that if I did my job, I might be able to try out most of them, but that afternoon, the realisation of my newfound freedom, and more than that, that I actually had a future here, made me want to fully surrender to the moment. I chose Harad, a tall, dark-skinned, lean, and muscular man. The kind of man I never thought would turn to look at me. Most of the rest got back to whatever work they had abandoned to come here. A couple of girls who had nothing planned asked if they could remain and watch. I wanted to say no at first, but then I realised it was far too late to be embarrassed.