Chapter 7 – Sonia

(If you prefer Wattpad to read, you can find the novel here : https://www.wattpad.com/story/78722854-the-songs-of-loss-book-one-armanth )

The three slaves had not seen Sonia or Priscius again. Magenta, the slave who had watched over them during the educator’s absence, waited for what seemed like an eternity, never allowing any of the three captives in training to speak or move. The slightest failure to do so resulted in the discharge of the goad. She seemed to have no more mercy than her colleague, but she had retained the warning and the discharges were weak. Sonia was Magenta’s superior, and she called her mistress, as she would have done to a free woman out of respect.

Magenta was Sonia’s assistant and, unofficially, her scapegoat. The slave was in her thirties and belonged to Priscius, who had educated her himself since her fifteenth birthday. She was so named for the color of her eyes, which were bright pink, a rare trait exclusive to the peoples of the Imareth archipelagos. Before Sonia’s arrival, Magenta had been the slave owner’s sole educator; but the latter, in her capacity as Languiren, had easily dethroned her five years earlier. She was still one of Priscius’ favorites, but she’d had a rough time of it when she’d been demoted to second-in-command of the household girls, which was nothing compared to her frustration and anger at Sonia’s despicable tricks. Unlike Sonia, Magenta was not only unfailingly obedient, but almost military in the discipline she imposed on the captives-in-training, whereas Sonia seemed to disdain compliance with Priscius’ orders, unless it served her interests or her job as educator.

More than two hours passed in painful torment for the three young women, an ordeal made all the more cruel by the fact that the slightest attempt to move was inevitably punished, and that, forced into immobility, they were also suffering from thirst. The more rebellious of the two sisters, still gagged, made several furious attempts at bravado, but to no avail. Finally, as the day drew to a close, one of Priscius’ henchmen came to untie them. With a snarling bark, he chased Magenta away and meticulously proceeded to attach each girl’s collar to the next, releasing them from the rings as he went. He treated them like cattle, ensuring their docility.

The older of the two Earth girls, decidedly stubborn, tried to fight him off and hit him hard. The backhand slap he gave her looked as if it might have stunned a buffalo, and she rolled to the ground, stunned. Lisa screamed in fear. As for Cénis, she held back a frightened scream with a snap of her jaws.

Lisa tried to stand up to help her elder sister. Cénis let out a « no! « She knew full well what would happen if the young woman intervened. Her principled contempt for the barbarian had just given way to the instinct to preserve a comrade from their fateful fate. Magenta, whom Priscius’ assistant had swatted away like a fly, stood a few steps away and stepped back, observing the scene torn between fear and interest.

The eldest was suffocating, dazed. Above her, the man unhooked from his belt a flat whip, as long as two hands, made of smooth, stiff leather. He delivered a volley of blows, aiming at her thighs, back, buttocks and even the arm the young woman was holding out to protect herself from her tormentor. Shouting orders that Lisa could no more understand than her older sister, he forced her back to her place, almost crawling under the blows that scorched the air and slammed into her skin, making her blush. The young redheaded captive cried out in supplication, at the same time as her elder sister wept in pain. Cénis, livid and frozen, was retching, and Magenta had disappeared, opting for cautious flight, preferring not to find herself targeted too, taking with her the sting and her load of Loss-metal, unaware that she had just accomplished a gesture of great prudence as Lisa’s terror grew.

Amidst the cries and daze of the three captives, Priscius’ assistant completed his task before pulling on the rope attached to Cénis’ collar to force her to follow, dragging along the other two, all three hands still tied behind their backs. Crossing the garden, he guided the trio, heedless of the stumbling footsteps and complaints of the slaves whose legs, after so long on their knees, were giving way. They were led into the cellars of the estate, where the cages were located.

The girls, who were already well trained, were housed on the first floor, in two comfortable common rooms furnished with cushions, carpets and comfortable diapers, with everything they needed to wash, care for and adorn themselves. But it was another matter altogether for the newly-arrived slaves: their only comfort would be a cage too low to stand on, with a straw-covered floor and not an ounce of comfort; another traditional High-Art humiliation, skilfully orchestrated to force the captives to realize in the most miserable way that they were indeed animals to be treated like livestock, basic hygiene included. The brutality of the assistant was part of the same process. The man was purposely used as an object to fix the slaves’ terrors and despairs. His role was to be feared and hated, abusing new acquisitions without the slightest regard. In this way, he crystallized in them, in the most brutal way possible, how men might now treat and regard them, so as to make precious any attention or tenderness that might later be lavished on them.

The three girls were ruthlessly shoved into a common cage, and the assistant left the ties that bound them to each other, chaining them to the wall by their collars. Restrained by a handful of links, their hands joined behind their backs by unyielding ropes, their collars tightly bound together, the three young women had neither enough freedom to touch each other, nor enough to move away from each other. Lisa found herself in the middle of the trio. She was used to cramps by now, but she had no illusions about the ones the night would bring. The only consideration they received, a moment after their torturer’s departure, was Magenta’s return. Without a word, she removed the gag from the elder of the two sisters and took a moment to make them drink in turn, before leaving the three captives in the half-light, lit only by a sighing window where the dying day could be seen.

Curled up as best she could, Lisa tried in vain to return to the welcoming entropy of the mists of her mind. Drowning there seemed sweeter than admitting that, less than a meter away from her, improbable as it was, her elder sister was there, now sharing her fate and no longer somewhere on Earth, safe and sound, far from this alien and demented world. But the young woman had no such respite. Her eldest, her body aching and burning from the blows she’d received, her head buzzing with a terrible headache, unleashed all her rage on her youngest daughter with a thousand swearwords. Her anger flowed in a torrent of hateful insults poured out in French. Cénis didn’t understand a word of what followed.

“What the hell are you doing here? I thought you were dead! Killed by your fucking dope, and I was swimming in shit! And here I am with these freaks who think I’m a slave, and you here? You, alive, not moving, not saying a word! Are you still wasted or what?”

There was something like sobbing in response. Cénis tried in vain to understand the meaning of these screams, bitterly noting that her neighbor seemed to let herself be shouted at without even making the effort or having the pride to react. Another volley of miscellaneous insults later, the elder’s dark eyes, blazing with anger, landed heavily on Lisa:

“Answer me when I speak to you! At least take responsibility for everything you’ve done to me!”

Cénis shouted in exasperation. Even though she was well aware that the taller of the two sisters wouldn’t understand, she was getting annoyed too:

“Stop shouting, you’re hurting my ears! You can see she’s broken already!”

Lisa replied, after another brief silence, in a whisper, in Athemais:

“She’s yelling at me… because I stole it and I lied, and… I hurt her a lot…”

The young redhead cut out syllables slowly, just long enough to find the words. She was stammering. Cénis opened round eyes, surprised at her mastery of the local language.

“And you let her? But… by the way, how do you know how to speak our language?”

Lisa left her prostration and sat up, tears streaming down her face. Her elder sister snarled:

“Ha! You’re only good at hiding anyway, so take a little responsibility! It’s all your fault!”

“Ha, shut her up! » retorted Cénis.

It took all Lisa’s willpower to make the effort to speak loudly enough and find the right words in Athemais, her mind clouded with grief.

“I’m in… your… uh… world? For twenty… twenty-three days? I… I learned your words by listening.”

Cénis didn’t answer immediately, her eyes wide with surprise. How could anyone learn a language in such a short time? Maybe it was one of those barbarians’ tricks after all. But eventually she asked, choosing simple words to speak to the young woman, how had she come to be here, who was she in fact? Lisa recounted what little she knew of her history, and what she was able to express in this language sshe didn’t master. She translated her sister’s questions back and forth, as she calmed down, despite her words still filled with gall towards her fate and her youngest sister. Her anger was dying with the horrible story she was discovering. Lisa had to struggle to recount and translate her three weeks of torment, her voice choking with tears and breaking with grief and fear.

The eldest was revolted, and another dull anger invaded her, much more intimate and profound, the kind that gives rise to hatred: she was already thinking of making them pay for what she had endured and what had been done to her sister. Whatever the means, whatever the time, she was sure she’d find a way sooner or later, and this thought would never leave her.

Cénis listened to Lisa, who was unable to discuss certain concepts for lack of vocabulary, but did her best to answer the young woman’s questions. The two sisters talked a lot, whispering in the silent half-light that was thickening and would soon give way to almost total darkness. They were alone in the cellars; or so they thought. The eldest, whom Cénis learned was called Elena, recounted the fate that had befallen her when her little sister disappeared.

Elena had found herself in a crazy situation, penniless, trying to explain her younger sister’s disappearance and pushing the police to look for her. No one really took her seriously: wasn’t her sister a recidivist drug addict and criminal? So many disappeared like this after one last robbery, never to be found, that the subject was of little interest to the police. Elena, in desperation, had walked the length and breadth of Paris with her sister’s photo in hand, squandering her last few euros to print out a summary wanted poster, which was plastered everywhere. In her desperate search, she had almost been mugged more than once, had to borrow money from friends and finally pawned what few possessions she had left. She had flooded social networks with messages, had called everywhere, had even tried to find her sister’s accomplices and dealers who could have helped her and given her information about her younger sister; but nobody knew where Lisa had disappeared to. Everyone, moreover, disdainfully thought she must have died somewhere.

For more than ten days, without sleep or rest, she had put her life on hold to find Lisa, sinking in her turn into the mire where her sister had drowned while she tracked her down. Elena plunged into the hell on earth she’d come too close to through her younger sister’s arrests, visits to police cells and closed rehab centers; until that afternoon when, following Lisa’s trail, Elena had ventured into a suburban squat lost behind an almost forgotten rail yard. She had caught a glimpse of two sinister figures who wanted to join her discreetly. She had no illusions about their intentions and had already picked up an iron bar with which she intended to make their task difficult, but then something happened.

As Elena waited with bated breath, hidden against a corner of the wall, the two thugs ran off, screaming imprecations of terror, speaking of devils and madness, aliens and monsters amidst their frightened insults, before running off at full speed. Elena was sure she’d seen something horrible enough to scream in fear, but couldn’t remember what it was; then came a black hole followed by terrible nausea and the feeling of dying.

She woke up naked. She was shivering on a warm day, lost on a grassy plain where she remembered seeing a small village in the distance. What followed was her capture by people dressed like oriental characters from cloak-and-dagger films, then the beatings, the ties, the terror: she was dragged by force by these totally foreign-looking individuals as if she were a trophy. And the cages, that immense blue moon barring the sky day and night; the realization that she was on another world among other captives terrorized like her, transhipped like animals in the holds of an ancient ship. Finally, her arrival in this garden.

Cénis cringed at not understanding Elena’s story, but Lisa translated as best she could for the young Eteoclian. She was curious about the story, but also about what Earth was like. Lisa could only clumsily explain a few concepts, but for the little she managed to do, the young aristocrat was perplexed and doubtful. It was so difficult, so foreign and so far removed from all her concepts that she barely grasped anything, especially as Lisa simply didn’t have the vocabulary to explain it.

Night had fallen, and the cellar was now totally immersed in darkness. As sleep and exhaustion overtook the trio, Cénis added a few words:

“They named you Selyenda. It’s a little field flower that grows on our plains, far from here. We use it to make bouquets, table decorations and dried flowers to perfume bath water. Young girls and even slaves wear crowns of it in their hair; where I come from, we say it’s the flower of lovers. I think they chose this name for you because you’re going to be a slave destined for pleasure.”

Lisa translated for her older sister, who stared into the darkness.

“Yeah, a whore, well!”

The eldest picked herself up, more tender, more gentle, when she saw her youngest crying at her answer.

-“We’re all going to become pleasure slaves; but I won’t make it easy for them, and by the time I learn the rules of their game, I’ll know how to make them pay for it.”

 

***

“Teach her to speak. Until she understands the simplest things, she won’t eat.”

The order was curt, the voice biting like an icy wind. Sonia was leaning over Lisa, crouching down on one knee, holding her chin with her slender fingers. She stared at the little redhead with her electric-blue eyes, which had a strange, unhealthy glint in them. Her full lips, almost the color of cherries, curled into a sinister smile. Cénis, who was also standing nearby, turned her head away, her teeth clenched, her stomach knotted in anguish.

“And I forbid you to use your barbarian language. Forget it and quickly, like everything else in your past life.”

The order was a fool’s game and Sonia was well aware of it; nothing is forgotten on command. The three captives were sleeping in the cellars, unattended, and would be there for a few more days. At night, especially with such an order, Lisa would do her utmost to teach her sister Athenae, and the educator was curious to see if Cénis would help them. The day before, in the deepest silence, she had slipped quietly by their cage, down the stairs to the kitchen storerooms, and listened in on their conversation. She’d learned a lot in the process.

But even if it was a fool’s game, she knew how to imprint in the young redhead’s mind the fear not of the consequences, should she dare to disobey, but of seeing her sister continue to starve. None of the three had been fed since the day before. Lisa was hungry, and so was Cénis, but Sonia knew that Elena had hardly eaten in days. She must have been starving to the point of cramping and weakening. This was the goal: to take away her strength to rebel. This one was just two steps away, on her knees, thighs open like the other two; but leaning forward, she wobbled with dizziness and kept swallowing, her complexion pale.

It was by design that, before Sonia joined them, the three captives had been reassembled in front of the fountain, then left under Magenta’s watchful eye. They had waited for almost two hours and were once again reduced to silence and immobility, but this time under the constraint of the whip. Sonia no longer left the electric prod to her assistant to deal with these three.

Waiting on her knees again was, for all three of them, a prolonged torture. And Sonia took her time, like a cat playing with its prey. She had joined the trio carrying a small basket of fruit. Some were totally exotic to the two Earthlings, including berries the size of tangerines, with a ruby-gold streak. Others, more identifiable: a bunch of grapes, and a few apples. The educator had placed them all behind her on a bench next to the fountain, before approaching the three slaves, examining them as she strolled along at a leisurely pace, her body undulating lasciviously. She had maintained a disquieting smile throughout the inspection, before crouching down in front of Lisa.

“Do you understand, slave?”

Lisa nodded, murmuring a muffled « yes ».

“Louder! Yes, who?”

Sonia’s tone became more incisive, her smile more threatening, lifting the young Terran’s chin again to remove any chance of her looking away.

“Mis… tress. Yes, mistress.”

Her voice was almost gone, and she had to control herself not to cower, pupils dilated and throbbing with fear. Lisa hated having to let go of that word: she’d understood its meaning and its revolting aspect perfectly; but if she could soften the cruel beast staring back at her, maybe her sister could eat. Cénis didn’t see it that way. Even frightened, hungry and exhausted by the wait, she protested, her chin held high:

“You’ll have a long wait before I call you that, slave!”

Sonia, still crouching, didn’t let go of the young barbarian’s chin and simply turned her unhealthy blue gaze on the little aristocrat who was attempting a bravado:

“So at least you know how to recognize a slave. But tell me, if you’re not one, then what are you doing on your knees, thighs open, showing off your shameless nakedness, hm? Why don’t you try to commit suicide like those of your race, to save what’s left of your honor?”

Cénis was speechless. That look… she was petrified, unable to reply. But the educator wasn’t done yet; in one move, she was on top of the Eteoclian, grabbing her face with one hand to approach it, breath against breath, with a menacing smile.

“I could help you with that. Doesn’t a princess know that death is better than ending up on your knees?”

She tilted her head at a sinister angle, her eyes crinkling ever more cruelly, her voice ever more suavely.

“Do you want to die?”

The young woman was now speechless with fear, bitterly regretting the pride of her provocation; she would never have admitted it in spite of everything. Sonia was trying to frighten her, fighting to resist with all her pride, cursing herself for allowing herself to be so terribly intimidated.

“Silence implies consent. ” Sonia suddenly straightened up, went to the ring holding Cénis to the ground and untied it. “So I’m going to grant your wish!”

The young woman yelped in terror, her eyes round. Lisa let out a scream and even the most exhausted of the three, Elena, staggered backwards, rearing back in fright at the news; this did not affect Sonia, who pulled on the leash freed from the ring to force the young aristocrat to follow, as she struggled in vain, shouting terrified « no! « terrified. But it was another « no » that brought her to a halt, as she made her way to the pool a few steps away. Lisa was practically standing, as far as her restraint would allow, and she stared at the educator with a mixture of revolt and horror. She had just screamed and repeated, pleadingly:

“N…no… don’t do it!”

Immediately, as she had anticipated, Sonia felt the electric prod against her thigh vibrate slightly. It wasn’t the device that was affected, but the few grams of Loss-metal in its dynamo that were resonating with the young Earthwoman. This tremor, which Sonia had felt before, was a warning, rarely perceived, little known, but nonetheless clear: Lisa was a Loss Singer. It puzzled Sonia, but to read her surprise, which she had skilfully concealed, would have been arduous. She’d been expecting it.

Sonia had planned to provoke the rebellions of such a broken young woman, to force her to struggle and fight. Normally, the Song of Loss was only awakened if the person who could use it was in mortal danger, and if his will to live was strong enough to force him to reveal his power; a power that no one really knew how to control or channel, and for good reason: such beings were so rare; and they were all enslaved. As far as the lossyans knew, these individuals were not to be allowed near Loss-metal, the source of their terrible gift. Apart from that, they had no way of knowing who was a Singer, or who wasn’t, except when the Awakening occurred, with its attendant destruction and often death.

“No?” The educator’s eyes became two slits, her smile venomous. “You dare say no to me; you dare give me an order, you animal?”

Lisa’s whole body shook in a spasm of fear. But she was on her feet and had disobeyed; it was too late. She lowered her eyes as her heart raced madly and, in an almost inaudible voice, whispered:

“Please… mistress… don’t… do that.”

Sonia ignored the vibration of the sting, which intensified a little more.

“You don’t know what I’m going to do. Kneel down!”

The order rang out sharply and sharply, the tone high. The three captives obeyed instinctively, falling to the ground before they realized it. Even Cénis, sprawled in fear at the feet of the educator, struggled to comply. Sonia took one look at the little princess to make sure she wasn’t moving, then stepped aside to place the prod on one of the garden benches, a good twenty steps away. In her opinion, the distance was sufficient to prevent the Loss-metal from entering into total resonance with the young earthling, thus avoiding any damage. The educator wanted to verify something, something that she alone, or so she thought, could once again understand and therefore anticipate.

The Lossyans no longer knew anything about the Song of Loss. They had all, since the time of the Long-Winter and under pressure from the Church of the Council, decided that it was a demonic and dangerous gift that should not be studied; it had become a taboo. But not among the san’eshe, who understood the nature of this power in a different way, as the living expression of Loss’s own will, which their shamans had learned to channel and exalt in the very rare bearers of this terrible gift. The Song was only awakened when an individual was in mortal danger; but with Lisa, things were different. There was no Awakening yet, and already, the Loss-metal seemed to vibrate with her when she was afraid for others. Sonia knew that it existed, or at least that the legends of her people told that this was how this gift had once revealed itself in at least one other Singer. The most legendary of them all.

Sonia returned to Lisa and bent down to untie the leash, almost nonchalantly. Nevertheless, she remained cautious, especially towards the older of the two sisters, who, despite her weakness, fulminated as she stared at her hatefully. Although she’d had no chance of freeing herself, Sonia wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d tried to pounce on her. Pulling the younger girl by the leash in her turn, she grabbed the Eteoclian’s and forced the two slaves to follow her to the pool, where she dragged them both in. The water was above their knees.

“I’ll show you, slave.”

Sonia’s voice was cold and detached. In a sudden movement, holding the leash as close to their necks as possible, she hurled them into the water, keeping them submerged in the pool. She was drowning them. Cénis and Lisa struggled as furiously as they could, but they had no chance of making the accomplished martial artist yield. She held their heads under the water, then pulled them back up, just long enough for them to believe that the ordeal was over; but no sooner had they caught their breath, than she rushed them again. Two more times, then three, then one more. Within moments, their efforts to resist became a vain panic, which only accelerated the inevitability of their fate.

Powerless, Lisa’s sister used up the last of her strength, cursing, screaming and jerking as she stood to try and break her leash. She put so much rage into it that she seemed close to succeeding. Without warning, Magenta burst out of the neighboring arbour, having seized the goad as it passed to strike down the rebel. She ended up on the ground, vomiting under the waves of electrical spasms from the device set to maximum.

Sonia didn’t have time to scream; she would have flayed Magenta and the deadly stupidity she had just committed, but it was too late. At the very moment when Lisa’s survival instinct was being put to the test by the educator’s drowning, there was Loss-metal next to her. For a second, Sonia thought about her immediate death, but without any real fear. She had wished for it so often that she was indifferent to it.

It was like a crystalline musical note, growing to vibrate the air. Without being aware of it, Lisa sang and her voice became inhuman, while the Loss-metal resonated with her, rippling the fabric of reality like the wave disturbed by the pebble thrown into it. The water in the pool seemed to explode and spray around a bubble that was violently pushing it back. Sonia let go of Cénis who, propelled by the wave of force, hit the edge of the fountain and weighed down the young Terran with all her might, plunging her into what remained of the liquid.

The instant Lisa found herself submerged, everything stopped; it had only lasted a brief second. Underwater, the Chant was as effectively gagged as if Sonia had locked her jaw. She weighed on the young woman again, determined to drown her enough to plunge her into unconsciousness. Behind her, two people stared at the scene, their eyes glazed over. Elena had only half-seen the spectacle and wouldn’t have understood, but Magenta was paralyzed. She knew. Sonia grabbed the inert youngest by one arm and the stunned Cénis by the other and threw them both out of the pool. Apart from the water that had splashed onto the pavement, there was no physical damage, and therefore no trace of the event.

Magenta was still standing, paralyzed, jaw dropping, goad in hand. Sonia slapped her across the face with enough force to make her nose bleed, as the older of the two Earth girls, who was also still dazed, looked on in amazement. No sooner had Magenta fallen to the ground than the educator grabbed her and strangled her with an arm-lock, with unprecedented efficiency and violence. She growled, her voice cold and deadly:

“You’ve made one mistake too many. I told you not to touch the goad again for those three…”

Sonia added nothing; she pulled Magenta towards the fountain, one arm choking her, the other holding back the electric goad in the young woman’s hand, which was turning blue with the sight of an eye. As Elena and Cénis looked on in amazement, she threw her into the water, the deadly device set to full charge falling with her assistant. The electrocution was almost immediate; the goad burned out in a short circuit and, in less than ten seconds, Magenta lay inert in the pool. She hadn’t even had time to scream before breathing her last.

The silence that followed was almost palpable. Lisa was the only one still unconscious; the other two had seen the whole thing, their eyes glazed over. Sonia turned to them, without a thought for her victim, flashing a sort of sickly, satisfied smile, her eyes lit up with a gleam of sinister pleasure.

“This is what awaits you if you talk about what you’ve seen. Is that understood?”

Two awkward nods answered in chorus. Sonia grabbed Cénis’s leash to propel her ruthlessly towards Elena and returned to bend over Lisa, who was coughing piteously, painfully regaining consciousness. She helped her to her feet with astonishing tenderness, supporting her as the young woman vomited water. Sonia murmured as she helped her, as sweet as ever, as if her assistant’s death had been a pleasure for her:

“The same goes for you. Magenta died because she did the wrong thing and saw the wrong thing. You’ll never talk about what happened. Because even if it’s more tenderly that I kill you, I’ll do it without hesitation…”

She helped the staggering young woman join the other two, before turning for a moment to the corpse lying in the water, then back to the captives. The eldest was tugging angrily at her bonds and angrily blurted out, in French: « Why? ». Sonia shrugged, pretending not to understand; and in any case, she wouldn’t have explained. She had discovered a rare, almost unique being on Loss, who was a weapon and a means, and she had every intention of protecting its secret, an indispensable condition for using it when the time came. Priscius was never to know; and killing Magenta for this reason had not only not bothered her, but satisfied her, despite her master’s likely black anger when she herself went to tell him that she had stupidly slipped into the pool with the goad fully charged; a remarkably idiotic blunder. She merely smiled, finally:

“It’s a pity. You could have tasted the fruits and perhaps eaten your fill, but I must go and warn our master of the clumsy death of one of his favorites…”

 

 

***

Sonia returned the three captives to their shared cage. Overcoming her horror at the event, Cénis swallowed and murmured, not without being sure that no one would hear, which was the case; Sonia had gone to join the master of the slave garden:

“What happened?!”

Lisa acted as translator for her elder sister, but she was unable to explain what had happened. All she really remembered was the terror, the feeling that she was going to die and then, suddenly, the sensation that she no longer belonged and that something else was working for her, before she fainted, swallowing water at the top of her lungs. Elena herself hadn’t seen much:

“It was like an explosion, something happened in the pool, and it enraged that crazy woman, Sonia. I almost saw fear in her eyes, before she jumped on the other bitch who’d just electrocuted me.”

Cénis replied in turn, but she was still trembling:

“I didn’t have time to see anything, but something happened. It’s very serious what Sonia has done; she’s killed the other girl! Not only is it a crime, but a crime from slave to slave of the same owner. If the master of the House were to find out, this Priscius, he’d have her savagely executed, and we could be in big trouble too, simply for having witnessed it.”

Elena replied, still in Lisa’s slow, clumsy translation:

“If she could die, that would be fine with me; but what do you mean? Could we take it too?”

“Oh yes, he could decide to kill us, or sell us to a brothel keeper and end up chained for life on a straw mattress in a house of houris. This woman, Sonia, is far worse than a whore and a monster, yes, but as sordid as our fate is, it could be far worse still; and in our misfortune, here, we have a chance.”

-“A chance? Are you kidding?”

“Hell, no! You wouldn’t understand, you’re earthlings. Consider that slavery is natural for us, but there are happy slaves and unhappy slaves with horrible fates. This is a luxury slave house; we’re destined to be sold for a fortune in auctions for rich buyers. Although it may end badly, our price is our protection and future comfort. I know it’s hard to grasp, because… even for me, it’s horrible and it’s only just beginning, but it could be much worse; it must be avoided at all costs.”

“So… you mean we have to keep quiet about this murder?”

Cénis nodded.

“We’re going to keep quiet about what happened. Say nothing and never speak of it again, even to each other, you understand? And you, Elena, must learn to speak at all costs. We’ll help you…”

Elena huffed in annoyance, but reluctantly agreed. Lisa hadn’t intervened, except to translate, but she too nodded. Above all, she was distressed at the thought of her elder sister being left to starve to death; she wasn’t sure that these lossyans would have any compassion on the matter. That night, Cénis and Lisa kept a long vigil, doing their best to teach Elena at least a few words. Hunger and anguish plagued them, and the cramps didn’t cease: they had once again been tied by their collars to the wall of the cage, which prevented them from lying down.

In the darkness and silence of the cellar, the three captives quickly lost track of time. Starved, shackled, not even sleep could rest them; and the urgency of watching over each other, the fear of being extracted from the cage for another torture, with no exact notion of time passing, only fueled their anguish.

By the next day, they were exhausted and nervously at their wits’ end. They found themselves once again in the fountain square, facing Sonia who seemed to be glowing, as haughty and cold as ever, flashing her sinister smiles. She never spoke of her confrontation with Priscius to tell him of Magenta’s death. The only clue Lisa noticed, and the other two along with her, was the educator’s swollen and slightly bluish cheek, which seemed to be unconcerned. The lessons continued. This became a ritual that lasted for the next two days: they were brought to the square in the morning by Priscius’ assistant, who systematically shook them without any regard and punished the slightest clumsiness with his flat whip. They were left for two hours on their knees under the watchful eye of Sonia’s new assistant, waiting exhaustingly and painfully for the educator’s goodwill; then she finally appeared, and the lesson began. By the second day, she had untied Lisa and made her stand up, before ordering her to get back on her knees. At length, with sensual or rough gestures, she forced her to sit up, to arch her back, then to do the same standing up, to turn around, to walk, to stand up straight; and she did it again, first with Cénis, then with Elena; and she did it again, for each one, patiently, without their exhaustion and dirtiness arousing the slightest pity in her.

She always kept the goad in her hand. She now used it in weak discharges; the simple gesture of bringing it close to the skin of the three slaves made them tetchy. She forced them to follow her instructions with the tip of the instrument, sometimes accompanied by her caresses, until she was satisfied. Only then would she allow them to eat, but on their knees, crunching the fruit she held out to them without using their hands. Their hunger was enough for them to abandon all dignity and accept being fed in this way. When the lesson was over, the immobile waiting on their knees resumed under the supervision of Sonia’s assistant, who now forced them to remain upright and arched. Finally, they returned to the cages, exhausted and exhausted, often shaking with fits of tears.

Their first privilege after three long, terrible days was a proper, if somewhat frugal, meal, and the right to wash in the fountain, sharing a single bar of soap. They cried. Sonia noted the tears with a smile. Her cruel, relentless work, for which she was so gifted and devoid of the slightest remorse, was progressing.