Chapter 25
Hendren
As Viola’s master, I recused myself from the tribunal that accepted her avowal of guilt, in accordance with Magisterian custom. I sat in the gallery, watching, as the embassy’s sergeant-at-arms led her into the hearing chamber, naked except for the collar that signified my ownership.
The media team from Federation News Services had their position in the gallery right next to my seat.
I could hear the reporter, Jana Trequin, a young woman from Draco who had already gained renown for her vivid narration of public interest events, as she explained to her viewers what was taking place.
Next to her, her director controlled the microdrone cameras and edited the broadcast in real time.
“And here is the former president now,” Jana was saying. “You’ve probably noticed that as His Royal Highness’ property she’s not entitled to clothing.”
The sight of Viola’s graceful composure despite her nakedness struck me with unexpected force.
Even stripped of all outward dignity, she moved with the bearing of someone who had once commanded star systems. The cameras followed her every step as she approached the tribunal bench, capturing the moment when a planetary leader would formally surrender her last claim to authority.
“Viola Herranofar,” the presiding magistrate intoned, his voice carrying the weight of centuries of legal tradition, “you stand before this tribunal as a free agent, having been offered clemency by your master. Do you appear here of your own volition to confess crimes against the people of Artemisia?”
Her voice carried clearly through the chamber’s acoustics. “I do, Your Honor.”
The formal proceedings unfolded with judicial ponderousness, each question designed to establish the legal framework for what would follow.
I watched Viola’s face as she answered, seeing the mixture of terror and resolution that had captivated me from our first encounter.
She understood exactly what she was surrendering, yet she proceeded with the same calculated determination that had once made her a formidable negotiator.
“The defendant will state her crimes,” the magistrate commanded.
Viola straightened, her naked form somehow dignified despite the degrading circumstances.
“I failed to adequately prepare Artemisia’s defenses against Federation expansion.
I prioritized military preparation when diplomacy was required.
My belligerence resulted in unnecessary military and civilian casualties during the planetary transition. ”
Jana’s commentary provided context for viewers across the galaxy. “This is extraordinary. A former head of state voluntarily accepting responsibility for her planet’s conquest. The political implications for what we’re just learning to call the post-war period can hardly be overstated.”
The magistrate consulted his documents with clinical detachment. “The tribunal finds sufficient evidence of dereliction of duty resulting in civilian harm. The defendant will receive twenty-four strokes from a judicial cane, at the start of first watch tomorrow morning.”
“And FNS,” I heard Jana say, “will of course bring Viola Herranofar’s caning to you live in just a few hours.
Until then, she will be taken into custody and spend the intervening time in a holding cell, contemplating her crimes.
Let’s watch her reaction as the sergeant-at-arms formally arrests her. ”
I watched, too, with what I felt must represent much more complicated thoughts and feelings than those of Jana’s viewers. When the sergeant-at-arms pulled Viola’s hands behind her to bind her wrists in black metal cuffs, she turned her head toward the gallery. Her eyes found mine almost instantly.
“Oh, extraordinary,” I heard Jana say, demonstrating again her noted fondness for the word.
“Viola has turned to look for her master, that is, His Royal Highness, just to our left here in the gallery. And I can see that His Royal Highness is looking right back at her. Who can say what silent communication is passing between them?”
I could say, though. In the eyes of the—yes, extraordinary—woman whom I suddenly realized I loved, I saw a gratitude that threatened to make my heart split open.
Viola
The night in the holding cell seemed endless, and yet at the same time terribly fleeting.
The sergeant-at-arms treated me very kindly despite the necessity of fulfilling every stern Magisterian law and custom concerning the correction of women’s misbehavior.
He freed my wrists from behind my back when we had arrived in the tiny space.
Then, however, he made me lie down on the metal shelf bed that folded down from the wall, covered only with a thin layer of leather-covered padding.
He told me to face the wall with my hands in front of me.
“Naughty hands,” he said in a voice that made it clear that the words represented part of an ancient script for these disciplinary occasions, “must not wander.”
Then, as I blinked up at him, he had reached over me and taken hold of my wrists, clipping the cuffs together again, then attaching them to a short chain that led to a ring set in the stone of the wall.
The sergeant-at-arms stood up, and delivered his final ritual pronouncement.
“Think on your misdeeds, and the punishment they have earned you.”
I had tried to crane my neck over my shoulder to meet his eye and, I felt sure, the invisible gaze of the cameras that must be observing.
I had wanted to show the watching galaxy my calm demeanor, my acceptance, my triumph over fear—rather than the plea for mercy that had kept threatening to well up in me.
But the sergeant-at-arms had receded into the doorway of the cell, and all I had been able to see was his movement in my peripheral vision, as he withdrew and closed the door behind him with an ominous, resounding clang.
Then I had resolved that since I probably could never fall asleep, I would spend the night putting my mental house in order.
I would, in fact, I told myself, think on my misdeeds.
I would sift through my thoughts and feelings about my mistakes—even if I did everything I could to avoid thinking about the punishment they had earned me.
I told myself that the bondage of my wrists, their being fixed together and attached to the wall like a Magisterian version of the Academy’s virtue-keepers, really represented a very light form of restraint.
Truly, I said to myself, it was nothing at all, compared to what would befall me in the morning.
The stern way I would, it seemed, be bound, for my own protection, to whatever horrid piece of disciplinary furniture the Federation used for criminals like me.
I tried to go back to the beginning—to my first taste of politics, of influence, of power, at the summer program for promising student leaders I had attended when I was eighteen.
I conjured up the beautiful campus of Artemisia’s School of Arts and Letters, and I tried to put myself in the splendid lecture hall where the president himself, Jianor Tralofar, my predecessor’s predecessor, had come to speak to us.
Instead, in my mind’s eye, I ended up in my dorm room, shared with another aspiring politician, trying to keep my hand from drifting down between my legs as I remembered the president’s speech.
How handsome and confident he had seemed, full of wisdom and trust in the future.
How mortifyingly needy I had gotten, right there in the splendid lecture hall, as I imagined him claiming my virginity.
When the sergeant-at-arms had bound my hands to the wall I had thought it an absurd, empty gesture—a little over-the-top display of masculinist power, ensuring that women soon to be punished couldn’t play with themselves when no woman in this position could ever even think of doing that.
Ten minutes into this terrible night, I realized that at least for a woman like me—my master’s trained concubine…
His Royal Highness’ dirty little slut… the prince’s naughty whore—the restraint represented a serious interdiction of satisfying a need I suddenly felt desperate to yield to, degrading as it might be.
My memories began to blur together in the dim light of the cell, exhaustion making the boundaries between past and future dissolve.
The handsome president from my youth transformed in my mind’s eye, his features shifting and blending until he became someone else entirely—older, more distinguished, with the bearing of authority I recognized from diplomatic functions.
President Marcan Valerrar. My immediate predecessor.
The man who had led Artemisia before me, who had retired to write his memoirs just as the Federation began its expansion into our sector.
In my fevered imagination, he stood beside Prince Hendren in some vast chamber, nodding gravely as my master explained my failures.
“She never understood the weight of true leadership,” the phantom Valerrar said, his voice carrying the disappointment I had always feared to hear from him. “Perhaps if she had accepted guidance from her elders, Artemisia might have been spared.”
Prince Hendren’s eyes fixed on my imagined naked form, bound helplessly before them both. “Then you’ll assist in her correction? Show her what proper submission to masculine authority looks like?”
The fantasy unfolded with terrible vividness.
I saw myself positioned over some brutal apparatus, my bottom raised high and vulnerable, while both men examined the implements of my punishment.
Valerrar selected a cane with the same careful consideration he had once used to choose his words in council meetings.
“Six strokes from me,” he said, testing the flexible rod with practiced expertise. “For the failures of leadership I should have prevented by training her properly. Then she’s yours to finish, Your Royal Highness.”
The first imaginary stroke sent fire across my phantom flesh, and I bit my lip to stifle the whimper that wanted to escape.
But in the twisted logic of my exhausted mind, the pain transformed almost immediately into something else.
After Valerrar delivered his measured punishment, he moved to stand before my bound form, his hands working at his ceremonial robes.
“A president must learn to serve those wiser than herself,” he murmured, guiding his hardened length to my lips. “Take this as the instruction you never received.”
My hips began moving involuntarily against the thin padding of the cell’s bed, seeking friction as the fantasy consumed me.
I squeezed my thighs together, clenching the muscles of my core as I imagined serving both men with desperate enthusiasm.
The restraints on my wrists made the sensation more intense somehow, the vanity of any resistance feeding the shameful arousal that flooded my system.
In my mind, Valerrar claimed my mouth with the same authority he had once wielded in the council chamber, while Prince Hendren positioned himself behind me. “Your predecessor is quite right,” my master’s voice echoed in my imagination. “You need to understand your place completely.”
I pressed my face into the padding to muffle my breathing as I worked my hips more frantically, chasing the building pressure between my legs.
The fantasy shifted and changed—now Prince Hendren was taking my mouth while Valerrar claimed my bottom with brutal force, his hands gripping my hips as he drove into me with punishing intensity.
I bit down hard on my lower lip, tasting copper as I fought to keep from crying out with desperate need.
The fantasy was consuming me completely, my body writhing against the thin mattress as I chased the building ecstasy.
Just as the pleasure threatened to overwhelm me entirely, I felt the familiar sensation of the governor activating between my thighs.
But this time, instead of the surge of stimulation I had wildly supposed my master might give me, there was nothing.
The suppressive function. Worse than nothing—a cold, neutering repression that drained away every trace of physical arousal with ruthless efficiency.
The wet heat between my legs simply vanished, my swollen flesh returning to the same kind of sensation I might get from my elbow or my heel, as if someone had thrown a switch.
A sob escaped my throat despite my bitten lip, the sound echoing off the stone walls of my cell.
The abrupt transition from desperate stimulation to relative numbness felt like a small death, my body suddenly foreign and unresponsive.
But even as tears pricked at my eyes, I felt a strange wash of gratitude flood through me.
He was watching. Even now, even here in this terrible place, Prince Hendren was monitoring my responses and protecting me from my own shameful needs.
The governor’s suppression had saved me from the mortifying experience of climaxing while tied up and utterly revealed in a prison cell, my cries echoing through the corridors for any guard to hear.
Yet as the physical sensations faded to nothing, I discovered something remarkable.
My mind refused to release the fantasy that had consumed me.
The images of Valerrar and Prince Hendren using my body continued to play behind my closed eyelids with vivid intensity, and I found that the mental arousal remained completely intact despite the governor’s intervention.
I could still feel the phantom weight of Valerrar’s authority as he claimed my mouth, still imagine the devastating stretch as Prince Hendren took my bottom with merciless precision.
The shame of serving both men, of being reduced to nothing more than holes for their pleasure, sent waves of psychological arousal through me that the governor couldn’t touch.
The realization struck me with startling clarity: it was possible to be aroused mentally even when every nerve ending had been electrochemically silenced.
My mind could crave degradation and surrender even when my body felt nothing at all.
The discovery should have disturbed me, but instead it filled me with an odd sense of relief.
Tomorrow morning, when Prince Hendren raised the judicial cane above my bound form, the governor would suppress every trace of physical pleasure just as it was doing now.
I would feel nothing but pure agony as the rod whistled down to stripe my flesh—no chemical cushion, no treacherous arousal to confuse punishment with reward.
But my mind would still be mine. In the depths of that brutal correction, as pain tore through my nervous system with clinical precision, I could still retreat into the psychological need that had brought me to this cell.
I could find refuge in the way that—thanks to be sure to my careful master’s training—I had finally embraced my body’s craving to submit.