Sufferance Ch. 04

D'Shea looked at Jaunda, who shrugged and answered me, "Mostly just through undesirable missions. And if the Sister is killed in action, well..."

"Exactly," I said. "It makes no sense to send Kerse after me when it was him that failed the first time."

"So you are certain Kerse acted on his own," D'Shea stated flatly.

"No, not certain, but I think he just wanted to fuck me, Elder, not punish or torture me. He could smell me—"

"Then consider it noted, Sirana," she said. "And pray it's not the case that Kerse would rather fuck you in secret without his Mother knowing. She'll be insane with jealousy if she decides that's what's going on and thrice as dangerous to you."

D'Shea let that sink in for a moment then continued. "Inform me immediately of any more contact with him, but we're watching his Mother for the time being. I don't believe she'll risk the Valsharess's wrath by harming Her organization directly, but she may cause trouble or annoyances for us still, however subtly. Trust me, I know them better than you, Sirana."

I nodded and bowed a wordless apology. When she put it like that, then yes, I supposed I could hope that my instincts were wrong about Kerse's intent in being there.

Even if I did have a very bad feeling about it.

"Gaelan, did you speak to anyone else?"

"No, Elder."

"Alright. Sirana, did you speak to anyone else besides Kerse?"

Oh, great. This wasn't going so well this eve. But I really did have to choose my lies and omissions carefully.

"My former Matron, Elder," I admitted, and she nodded.

"What did you say?"

"A blessing. That her state honored the festival."

"Her state?"

I nodded. "She is about a year pregnant."

"I see. She caught well before you entered the Sisterhood, then, and she did not send a message to you at Court."

I shrugged. How long had D'Shea known that of my mother before she recruited me? "It doesn't matter now, Elder. I am of the Sisterhood now."

Her copper eyes were still boring into me. "Why did you speak to her at all?"

I barely paused. "To make my new allegiance clear. To let her know without doubt that I was no longer part of her House. She acknowledged it without contest. That was all. I walked away."

D'Shea nodded acceptance. "Anyone else you spoke with?"

I sighed inwardly. "A battle mage named Callitro who stood with his two colleagues."

Jaunda covered her mouth with one gloved hand, looking both thoughtful and amused, while Gaelan stood quiet and non-judging.

"Tell me about that conversation."

"All flirting," I responded. "Callitro wanted me to know he was at my disposal at the worship ball, I had only to ask. Alas, I could not use him for anything in particular, but... he told me how to get in touch with him later at the Tower, if I so desired."

"Really," D'Shea said rather deadpan. "And how is that?"

"Requisition the making a magical item, request him as the maker. He said the contact's name is Phaelus, that he's talked with Red Sisters before. I would have official reason to visit him in his quarters then."

D'Shea's expression didn't tell me whether or not that information was trustworthy, but given Callitro's behavior and obvious lust, I was willing to bet on it.

My Elder was quiet for long moments and finally said, "Good work. That may prove useful to me." One corner of her mouth rose a little. "Now comes the question of why you talked with him at all?"

I smiled straight-up, though my teeth were a little tight as I imagined she may try to block me. But I still couldn't lie here, either. "I wanted to smell him, to see if he or either of his companions was the invisible wizard from my second trial."

D'Shea let me read her expression clearly. It said, *I thought so.*

"Has it occurred to you that we know who he is, Sirana?" D'Shea asked me now.

"Yes, Elder," I replied. Of course it had.

"Why haven't you asked for his identity?"

"The same reason I gave you in the candle chamber after he'd finished raping me, Elder," I crossed my arms as I spoke. Of course, at the time I'd been bent over naked and gripping my ankles with Gaelan lapping at my sore backside. Hardly a position to make a memorable oath, so I reiterated. "It's on my time table now to find him and pay him back. And it will be my pleasure to do so."

Besides, just a few cycles ago when I'd asked Jaunda whether the soldier still lived or not. She'd only smiled back at me, silent as a wraith, and I didn't even care about finding the soldier as much as I did the wizard. Regardless of what D'Shea hinted now, I didn't believe she would just tell me.

My Elder peered at me for several moments, then shrugged and nodded. "As you wish. Consider it a standing directive to continue the search, secondary to any current assignment. Inform me when you find him."

She'd just approved the hunt. And she said, "when." I liked that vote of confidence.

I grinned. "Then what, Elder?"

She looked a bit surprised at the follow-up question. Normally that was her territory. I repeated it. "I'll inform you when I find him. Then what, my Elder?"

I wanted to hear it from her lips.

She smirked slightly. "Pay him back as you said. You are only forbidden to kill him, Sirana."

"Thank you, Elder."

"And I want reports on anything of note within the Wizard's Tower."

"Of course, Elder."

Maybe it was turning out to be a pretty good evening after all.

******

After we were dismissed, Jaunda gave me a gesture that held no uncertainty. I would just go with her to her room and not even pass by Gaelan's to drop off anything. Wherever she'd just been on Rausery's orders, she was looking for work off some stress. I had stared for a moment at my Lead's intense, naked lust and most signals indicated she was in a mood to be rough.

"Come on, Thall." She walked away without even looking behind to see if I followed.

I hesitated.

Two months ago this might have been Gaelan. The two of us shared a brief look and she seemed to plead with me not to start fighting Jaunda now, and she gestured, *Remember.*

Remember our deal. Yes, of course, I was still trying to think of a favor in exchange that might equal it...

Although truthfully I hadn't given Jaunda a lot of thought between the beginning of the cycle when I'd dominated Gaelan and now; there had been so much to watch and wonder. So what would I do now? Just submit and go along as I had before, try again when I had a plan? Try to change something small now? I had to wait for an opportunity for that and wouldn't know it until it happened.

I had to catch up, first; Lolth help me if Jaunda had to turn back to get me.

We moved through the curved hallways of the cloister. Jaunda wasn't too far from Gaelan, as most Sisters shared two or three to a room, and we as a unit bedded down closer to D'Shea than to Rausery. As Lead, Jaunda had a room to herself and she practically hauled me inside it, murmuring the command to slide the magical stone door closed with a rather final sounding thump.

I wouldn't be leaving until the waking time, and Jaunda never bothered with healing draughts after sex. She did sometimes do a hot soak in a bath, though. I could hope for that, especially considering she was still stained with dried blood and smelled to have been on a long trek in the Underdark.

My Lead clasped me to her before I'd gotten far into her quarters and slammed me up against the outside wall by the door. She pressed her body to me and stared at my face a second before she closed her mouth on mine, forcing my mouth open as she had her eager fill of my lips and tongue.

It occurred to me that I knew just what to do to get her to stop right then; a pressure point Rausery had shown me was vulnerable...

But I couldn't. Not without purpose or plan.

I yielded my mouth to her forceful exploration.

When finally she stopped, we were breathing hard for air and she said, "You look great, by the way. I heard Rausery loaned that to you after two days of training. Have to tell me how that went later."

I smiled ironically. "Sure."

She took hold of my hair at the nape and pulled to the side, leaning to bite my neck and nibble on my jaw and earlobe before biting my neck again. Her appetite was powerful as ever and I gasped at her attentions. I was becoming aroused in spite of myself.

"We'll get the reds made just for you before too long," she murmured, gently kissing the flesh that I was sure was bruised and teeth-marked by now. "We'll have to replace that black belt, too."

As she spoke, she undid it and let it drop gently. She began stripping me out of the red uniform with impressive efficiency; soon I would be naked. I could imagine what to do, then, too; again, there was the opening and the vulnerability Rausery had shown me, long before I was fully undressed. I could stop her, except...

Her heavy breathing and the occasional low growl from her throat was a hint that I'd be sorry if I genuinely tried to resist. And then she smiled, scenting me and humming in pleasure, purely focused on her desire for me. Her force of personality could be overwhelming.

If I knocked her out using Rausery's "soft touch," oh, she would be furious when she woke up...

Maybe this wasn't the right time.

After she'd stripped me to the waist and took her time biting my breasts and sucking on my nipples to make them hard, she actually swept my feel out from under me. I cried out, startled, but managed to break my fall and land without injury. I just lay there on my back as Jaunda peeled the pants up my legs and took off each boot before yanking off everything else.

As it had been several times before between us—and opposite of Gaelan and I earlier—she was fully dressed and I was fully nude.

She still had my left foot in her hands and she massaged it before bending down to nibble on my toes and bite the inner arch. I winced but managed not to jerk my foot out of her hands like I had the first time. She made an approving sound and went back to sucking on my smaller toes, her fingers digging harshly into my ankle as my own felt the grit of the bare stone floor. By now I knew not to deny her anything, even if I was just waiting for her to move on from my feet.

Except that at some point, I would have to deny her something in order to change it...or just wait for someone to take my place, as Gaelan had. Which I didn't really want to do; not if the "next one" had to be Rausery's, for some reason....

"Open wide for me," she growled, releasing my foot.

I stretched my legs up straight and together toward the ceiling, opening them slowly as she liked it, until my hands were bracing my thighs. I held the position with my toes pointed toward the opposite walls. She gazed hotly down at me, drew the obsidian dagger at her belt and kneeled between my legs.

Jaunda barely touched the tip of her blade between my netherlips, watching me with the intensity of the predator that she was. I focused on controlling my breathing, holding still and waiting. I felt the flat of the cool black glass press to one side of my entrance, and then the other. The very tip almost tickled as it was dragged so lightly over my naked netherlips to barely touch my clitoris before moving to ruffle and reverse the lay of my pure white mound hair.

It had been a while since she'd done this, but I knew—prayed—that she was only testing me.

My Lead had been one of those holding me on the altar during my final trial. I hadn't known that until much later, until she'd told me, but she had been part of my ritual, part of Lolth's Threshold, which healed my womb and forced me to overcome my fear of my late blood sister. Jaunda had watched Lelinahdara push an enchanted dagger half-way up inside me, had watched me take all of it willingly. And she had seen how it did not cut me but channeled the magic up through my very core, completing the powerful divine spell.

She placed the tip of her own dagger there now as a reminder.

And to do just a little trimming. She liked it on the short side.

"We encountered some Surface-dwellers coming back from our mission," Jaunda murmured, her eyes gleaming still as she tugged my sex's fur up away from my skin and made small, sharp cuts, trimming away any part of it that curled. When she was finished, it would be short, lay flat, with every hair pointing toward my nub like an arrow saying, "fuck here." Meanwhile, I held my legs open, feeling the strain but able to last for another several minutes without wavering if necessary. I looked up at her with interest at her statement. Sometimes she had told me a side-story to a mission, though never about the mission itself. She had grown to enjoy my very attentive ears to what she said.

But that had always been after the sex...why was she starting at the beginning?

Since she obviously wanted me to, I asked, "Surface-dwellers? All the way down here?"

"More a like fifty kliks up and out," she said, and I felt the soft leather of her glove brushing some loose hair off my lips.

"How do they see in the dark?"

"Magic circlets around their heads," she grinned. "Although I'm sure the survivors regretted the gift long before we were done with them."

Jaunda had finished trimming me and sheathed her blade, still staring at my pussy like she hadn't drunk water in whole cycles and I was the river. She removed her gloves and set them aside, started touching me more slowly than I would have guessed she would.

"There was a Surface Elf among them. Female."

Her intensity and the way she slowly fed hints definitely held my interest, and stronger tingles bloomed between my legs as she touched me. A Surface counterpart...?

"What did she look like?"

"Compared to us? Taller but somehow still... small. Thin. In torchlight, her skin was like a pale mushroom, her hair gold like the earth metal and her eyes this bizarre pale green."

"Gold hair? Not blond? How old was she?"

"I estimate about two hundred, not a day older. The gold was not due to age."

Jaunda leaned down then to suckle at my sex and I gasped, my legs trembling from both fatigue and the sensation. She moaned in pleasure and greedily drew in the scent of my sex, though far too soon she lifted her mouth off and tapped one leg, indicating that I close them and come to attention. I went to my knees first, and when she gestured that I stand, I did so. She clasped me again and felt all over my naked flesh, my nipples scraping against the seams in the red leather.

I could still smell the blood and dirt on her, and while that did smell worse than her unwashed body, the two together were primal and exciting to me somehow. Perhaps I'd smelled similar when I'd arrived on the Consort's farm...

"The Elf was so frail," Jaunda whispered now, her eyes sparkling with laughter and her teeth bared. "And her strength of will...well. Do you want to hear what we did to discourage them from coming farther down into the Underdark?"

I nodded. I was intrigued, and Jaunda actually wanted to talk as she fucked me. That was different.

"They were mostly males. Human Men, with a few half-breeds of some mix. Also a dwarf far fuzzier and uglier than the Duergar. The males were dominant, no doubt about it. The few females there were only support, or to serve. They spoke a Surface language I didn't understand, but when a strong male cuffs a small female on the back of the head and she only cowers, then...well, you don't need to know the language."

I stared at her; I already knew the gnomes and the dwarves down here in the Underdark were more often than not led by the males, but strong female leaders also existed. On a scale, the genders were probably more balanced when compared to the Drow, but thus far I had only heard about the Surface and how opposite it could be. Now Jaunda had actually seen some of it first-hand, down in our own territory.

Jaunda's naked fingers sank into my pussy and I gasped again just before she kissed me. Then she turned me around and held me by the throat with her wet right hand, her left arm around my torso and gripping my right breast.

"The Men varied in size much more than our males do. One in particular was so big he might have been able to get into a fist match with Kerse. Their mages tend to be smaller, which makes sense for scholars. I believe the Elf was also a mage of some kind, a healer but with strange growing things woven into her hair and cloak."

Growing things? I hadn't heard of many from the Surface except...

"Trees?" I guessed.

"No," she chuckled, and kissed the back of my neck as she pushed me closer to her bed. I could feel the familiar motions behind me as she still held my throat but released my breast to tug at something near her waist. She would be donning her Feldeu soon.

"How many total?" I asked.

"Fifteen."

"And you...?"

"Five, as always. It was more than enough. We took out the largest ones on first strike, before they knew we were there. Quick poison on crossbow pistols." Her breath was shaking with excitement. "We took those making gestures next. The female Elf was the only one smart enough to gain distance and tried to blind us with light, but we didn't need our eyes to smell and hear them. They smelled so rank, and so clumsy down here, they telegraphed everything far in advance of their actions. Ten of the fifteen killed in under six seconds."

"Rausery would be proud," I snickered and yelped when Jaunda slapped my bottom hard with a chuckle.

Her arm returned around my waist to clasp my breast again and I felt her erection line up in the cleft between my buttocks. She slowly ground against me as she kept talking.

"The five remaining? The weakest of the Men fighters who had dropped his sword, three Human females who were cowering...and the Elf who'd run but we caught up with her. We tied them all up, but had particular fun with the Elf."

"Should I guess?" I teased as she pushed me forward onto the bed.

Jaunda chuckled, turning me onto my back and grasping both my wrists, settling her hips between my legs. She braced herself and nudged around, refining her aim, then finally wedged the head of her cock at my cunt. I'd become slick during the talk and physical foreplay, and knew it would be a comfortable penetration.

"You know how most Nobles have trouble accepting when they're the ones getting fucked?"

She thrust inside me on the last word and I gasped as she moaned, then moaned myself as she took a couple slow strokes. Her eyes had been closed but slowly opened to meet mine and pick up the story again.

"One would think we were cutting off her ears the way she was screaming and crying at first, before we'd done more than strip her naked. The others started yelling, too. We had to gag all of them with the noise they were making, as if to call every hunter in the area to our location."

Jaunda was speeding up her power and pace between my legs; I could see the memory in her eyes as she relived it.

"You f-fucked her...this way?" I asked.

"Yeah....yeah," she answered, grunting. "Beautiful but so pale and so weak... couldn't fight. Only cried. Don't know...why she came down here. Would never survive..."

I had to concur. Competition was fierce down in the Underdark; hesitation meant you lost the fight and the food and if really unlucky, one's life. And more, crying meant only that one would submit to anything the stronger wanted and leave it to them whether one lived or not. It meant you deserved to be a slave.

Why would the females ever cower or cry down here? Didn't they know what would happen?

"Understand...anything she said?" I coaxed. "There are...mirrors in our Languages, I read."

Jaunda grinned, huffed, and pulled out entirely before slamming into me again. "'Defiler'," she cooed. "I understood that."

I laughed, felt a hot pulse in my sex in response. I understood the irony. That was one of our creeds; if the Red Sisters were sent to punish, then one could bet that their body and whatever they held sacred would be defiled.