Judgment II: Mercy (10 page)

Mercy couldn't breathe. Her hips convulsed wildly, even though the spray now beat its fury down upon her battered buttocks, pummeling the bruises without mercy. She grabbed between her legs with both hands, and like a dying flower, wilted into the bottom of the tub.

Pooled around her, the water caught at the wet strands of her hair, pulling them as it raced towards the drain. For the longest time, all she could hear was the pounding of her heart in her ears. The warm liquid heat that surrounded her mingled with the warm liquid heat within; she couldn't tell anymore what she felt upon her fingers—rivulets of water from the shower as it rolled down between her buttocks and spilled across her hands, or the liquid of her arousal, priming her cunt to welcome Shipe into her.

Very briefly, his hand settled on her back between her shoulder blades. Then he shut the water off for the last time.

"We'll do this again tomorrow. Dry yourself and get dressed. I want to be in the dining hall having breakfast in twenty minutes." He pulled himself up and, leaning on his crutch, left the bathroom.

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87

Judgment II: Mercy

by Denise Hall

"The majority of your days will be spent here," Shipe said as he led her into the common library.

The room was positively huge. There were two fireplaces in one wall, both so large that a pair of grown men could have walked into them upright and, standing side-by-side, stretched their arms far apart and still not have touched the opposing walls or each other. Sofas and chairs made that area a cozy place for sitting and chatting, while in the center of the room, a study area had been erected with six rows of tables and benches and extra lamps for reading.

Literally dozens upon dozens of bookcases stretched from floor to ceiling in neat rows throughout the room as well as along the walls. There wasn't an empty shelf anywhere that Mercy could see. The quantity of books had to number in the tens of thousands.

"The Lessers are allowed in here three times a day: for a half hour each mid-morning and afternoon break, and for two hours after the dinner bell." Shipe motioned her to the huge, archaic catalog-card filing system and the small desk that had been set up for her beside it. "The instant a Lesser enters this room you are to drop what you're doing and I want you there," he swung an arm around to indicate the corner behind her desk, where a tall stool waited. "From the time the first one enters and until the last one leaves, you will face the wall. You don't so much as glance sideways and at no time 88

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will it ever be acceptable for you to converse with the Product. Is that clear?"

"Yes, sir." Mercy nodded her head for good measure. She could still feel the effects of the shower. Her body still hummed and throbbed, and when he gave her that stern look—his dark eyes narrowed, his frowning mouth firm with stern authority—it made her stomach quiver, her nipples peak, and her sex pulse with an arousal she wanted so badly for his touch to assuage.

"Your job will involve keeping the library neat and in order," Shipe told her. "Pick up any stray books and put them away. The rest," he waved one hand to indicate the whole of the library, "hasn't been catalogued since the initial purchase some twenty years ago. We've added a few since then, so you'll need to go shelf by shelf making a list of what we have.

It'll likely take months and it's hardly exciting, but at the end of each day I'll check your progress to make sure there is some and to motivate you if there isn't."

Mercy turned in a slow circle, counting the bookcase. The job was immense. She would need a ladder just to reach the books on the top shelves, and she wasn't that fond of heights.

"Books are not allowed to leave this room," Shipe continued. "Which is probably the biggest reason for why I find them all over the damn mountain. If a volume catches your interest, you may keep it on your desk—so long as your desk is kept neat—and read it on your breaks while you're facing the corner."

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As Mercy gingerly lowered herself to sit on the wooden seat at her desk, she asked, "If I see someone leaving the library with a book, what should I do?"

"I assume you mean a Lesser," he said, his tone even but his eyes growing glacially cold, "since I know you would not dare presume to tell a guard or master what he may or may not do within these halls."

She flushed. "Y-yes, sir. I-I mean n-no ... I—"

"If you see a Lesser thieving a book, then you report it to the nearest guard," Shipe snapped. "And then you ready yourself for the thrashing of your life. I've already told you, if Lessers are here then you are ... where?"

"In the corner." She flushed even hotter. "Facing the wall."

"Do you need help remembering that?"

She shook her head. "No, sir."

His grunt held a note of disbelief. "An hour before lunch, you may excuse yourself to the Crater. Do your running and be ready to meet me in the dining hall for lunch at twelve o'clock noon. I expect you to be standing at your table by twelve sharp. At twelve and one second, if you're not there, I will hunt you down and blister your ass. Got it?"

She nodded hastily. "Yes, sir."

"Good." He swung around to leave, waving his arm back at the library. "Then get cataloging."

* * * *

"I don't know. She must be important, though."

"Maybe a Personal," a third girl softly added.

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"No, Personals wear white. Their tunics are as soft as silk.

Look at that ugly green thing she's got on. It's longer than even a Primary's!"

Mercy sat on her stool, facing the corner and listened to the curious whispers. There was only ten minutes more to the mid-morning break, and she could hardly wait for the bell to ring and the Lessers to all just go away.

"Maybe she's a guard's Personal," yet another girl whispered.

Mercy didn't know how many Lessers were sitting at the table nearest her, but so far she had counted five distinct voices.

"Even the guard's Personals wear white. Besides, I've seen her with Master Shipe."

Six.

"Maybe she's a pet," the first girl whispered with a giggle.

"She certainly followed Shipe around like a dog. Yesterday, he made her crawl through the halls on a leash."

Mercy felt her cheeks grow hot with anger. That wasn't true! Oh, she would have loved to turn around and tell them a thing or two. But she bit her lip and kept her hands tightly locked together in her lap. She glared at the wall so hard that it made her eyes hurt and her ears buzz.

"Shipe!" another scoffed. "That settles it! She's definitely not a Personal, then. He's too mean and hateful to want a woman."

Mercy almost fell off her stool she jerked around so hard.

"He isn't either hateful!" she hissed at them, her eyes crackling angrily. "Shut up over things you know nothing 91

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about!" Then she jerked back around and faced the wall again, seething in quiet.

There was a stunned silence behind her, then the table erupted in giggles.

"Psst!" one of the girls whispered at her back. "Hey, green!"

"What's your name?"

There was an abrupt shushing and the whispers suddenly ceased. A few seconds later, the slow tromp of booted feet on the stone floor approached Mercy's corner. Making his round, a switch-toting guard passed between her desk and her stool.

He stopped just behind her and her heart flip-flopped as she heard the rustle of paper. Without a word, he began to write.

There was a soft tear, then a white slip appeared before her face. It said:

RECOMMENDATION FOR DEMERIT

NAME:.... Mercy....

OFFENSE ... Talking to Lessers....

SIGNED.... Halloe....

APPROVED....

Mercy took the slip with trembling fingers. "Thank you, sir."

There was a note of amusement in the guard's voice as he replied, "Not a problem. Your barracks' master will need to sign it."

Then he went to the table. There was a chorus of groans and pleading as he began to pass slips out to each of them.

"But we weren't talking to her!"

"She talked to us!"

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"Oh no, please! I've already got a demerit! Please, sir!"

"Now you'll have two," was all the guard said, and he calmly walked away.

That put an end to the whispers. In fact, as Mercy sat frozen on her stool, she heard the stiff scrape of chair legs on the stone floor and the group moved off to another table.

She shook all over, holding the slip in her fingers, staring at it until the words blurred. She barely even heard the bell ring, calling the Lessers back to their skill rooms. Though she didn't turn around until after they all were gone, she knew they stared at her as they left. She could feel their eyes burning vengeful holes into her back.

She slid slowly off the stool. She barely felt the battered muscles of her buttocks protesting at the slightest involuntary touch of the seat against her tender flesh. By the end of the day, she knew it would be a whole lot worse. She still had the twelve strokes she'd earned yesterday, a Demerit caning and—if Shipe signed the slip as she knew he would, she swallowed hard—the worst thrashing of her life to bear before Lights Out.

Mercy picked up the pad of paper and pencil from where she'd left it on her desk and went back to the shelf she'd been in the process of cataloging before the mid-morning break had sent her to the corner. Tears blurred her eyes making it difficult to read each title and the names of the authors. For the rest of the time until eleven, when she straightened her desk and left for the exercise track, she barely got anything done.

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Because she didn't know what else to do, she took the disciplinary slip with her. In the shower room, she left the white note lying on the bench, shamefully tucked underneath her neatly folded tunic, before donning her windbreaker and shoes and jogging outside into the cold. She did fifty jumping jacks and twenty push-ups, and since she had no way of telling what time it was out here, only took three of her regular laps.

Afraid that she might be late to lunch, she rushed through her shower and only partially dried her hair before running a hasty comb through the tangles. With the slip in hand, as she made her way to the dining hall she tried to think of what she could tell Shipe about the incident that might soften his hand toward her. Every excuse, including the stark truth, she ended up discarding. Shipe wasn't a man to be softened, and the realization that nothing she said was likely to make a difference was a bitter one to have to swallow.

Mercy arrived for lunch ten minutes early. The hall was empty but for two masters quietly conversing on the dais.

Neither said a word to her as she crept down the aisle to stand silently by her chair. Head bowed, she stared down at the sandwich on her plate, holding the slip in nervous hands as she waited.

Lessers began arriving in groups by the skill class. The masters followed one or two at a time, and some came through the door with sniffling, red-eyed Lessers, who ruefully rubbed their bottoms before slinking away to their assigned tables.

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"I'll be damned," she heard the Master Doctor Moulton say as he climbed the dais steps. "Would you look at that. He's early for a change!"

Mercy bowed her head even more as she heard the familiar limping gait of Shipe coming down the aisle towards her.

"You made it," he said to her, as he rounded the side of the dais.

With her eyes locked on her plate, she didn't answer, but held up the disciplinary slip. At first, as his heavy tromp climbed the dais' steps, she was afraid he hadn't seen it. She swallowed hard, not sure if she should call out to him or not.

Was it permissible to speak at all in the presence of the Lessers, or should she remain silent at her table of public exile, pretending not to exist?

But then Shipe said, "Put it down. I'll take a look after lunch."

It was an odd feeling, to be so relieved and yet scared at the same time. She quietly lay the slip beside her plate and clasped her hands before her again, her palms beginning to sweat as she pressed them nervously together.

Tane did not preside over the lunch hour, and it was Master Deaton who gave the command to sit. The Lessers probably got something better, but her meal was a ham sandwich without cheese and no mayonnaise to moisten the bread. Even with the glass of room temperature water that she'd been given to drink, Mercy could barely choke it down.

She sat there for the rest of the hour, waiting for the bell to ring and for Shipe to pronounce her punishment.

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She wished she'd held her tongue. Tears welled in her eyes and coursed unhindered down her cheeks. This was probably why Richard had bought the Interlopers in the first place; because she couldn't be depended upon to obey even the simplest commands. She was a horrible submissive, a nuisance. She swiped at her cheek with one hand and sniffed as quietly as she could.

The lunch bell sounded, and still Mercy remained at her seat until all the Lessers had filed from the room. The masters came down off the dais last, laughing and talking amongst themselves. Master Deaton stretched his back and said to Boyden, "This is a complacent bunch. It's been months since we called an assembly. A thorough whipping all around would shape some of these girls up nicely."

"I'll do you one better," Boyden laughed. "You bring Desire, I'll bring Harvest, and we'll trade Personals. I'll bet my new, studded harness for a ruby comb that I can make your Personal cry out long before you get so much as a squeak out of mine."