world. Show me your skill, and perhaps you may rise to the rank of master, and even rule the stables when Morqan here himself moves up. Learn the ways of my stables and train this filly of mine in them, and you shall live, and so shall all the goodmen and goodwomen of Amidia who once were nobles.”
There was a silence then. Edera pictured Lord Ranin’s face, and she felt sure he wore the same expression of concern he had shown her when she had decided to go to the parley with this strange, cruel emperor of Maq. She bowed her head and closed her eyes, feeling the tears leaking out from beneath her eyelids.
“Your imperial majesty,” Lord Ranin finally said. “As you might guess, I feel I have no choice but to accept.”
Comnar responded in a tone that had horrible glee in it, “Oh, of course, but I have not made the proposition as awful for you yet as I will now proceed to do. For now, I will show you what the ways of my stables entail. Lads, let’s proceed with the wash-down. Lord Qartin, please ensure that Goodman Versal here watches every bit of these procedures, since he will be required to enact them with his special filly very soon. Do you hear me, Versal? You will do every one of these shameful things with filly Edera.”
“Yes, your imperial majesty.” Lord Ranin’s voice sounded wretched. What did the emperor mean, Edera wondered. What were the terrible things? She and her friends had been in the stables only a very short time, and they had seen nothing, though they had heard sounds that Edera couldn’t understand, hearing them from where she lay looking for sleep on the straw of the stall they had led her to, next to the stalls into which they had put Melisan, Adilan, and Alira.
Master Morqan said, “Alright, Gad, let’s get that bit out of Edera’s mouth, and then her tail. Then you can see to Melisan. Hednar, you see to Adilan and Alira. Once they’re all untacked, wash those backsides out nicely. Then the wash-down proper: Melisan, then Adilan, then Alira. Goodman Versal, Gad and Hednar are good boys—they don’t need all the direction: I’m just saying it so that you can get used to our wash-down routine.”
“I thank you, Master Morqan,” Lord Ranin said.
Gad unbuckled her bit and laid it on a bench next to Edera’s harness. “Time for the tail, sweetheart,” he said. “Get that rump nice and high for Gad, and those knees well spread, and we’ll have it out in no time.” Shivering with embarrassment, and hardly believing that she could really do this in front of Lord Ranin, she bent her face to the stone floor that stank of fillies’ pee, and assumed the position she had learned the day before, when their bungs had been taken out for the first time. For the moment, it was the most humiliating thing that had ever happened to Edera, but the need to have the tail out of her bottom made her eager to comply with Gad, and the kindly tone he had adopted actually made it easier.
“Arch that back now, filly,” Gad said, and he began to pull. Edera tried not to picture what she looked like to the man who had been her lord chancellor when she had been his princess, but nonetheless the vision appeared of the wicked bung and its fine white horsehair that must have come from an Amidian mare, between the chastised ovals of her bottom cheeks, of her tender private part revealed when Gad moved the tail aside—of it all upturned and offered to the observer as if for… for Edera didn’t know what, but knew that the wicked part of her wanted that, whatever it was.
Then the shameful noise as she managed with Gad’s help to push it out, and the moan of relief she gave when she was free of it. Gad put the soiled thing in front of her; she knew from the previous day that she would have to clean it—that fillies were given this one human responsibility, as was befitting their status. And then, the washing out afterward. Her heart quailed at the thought of Lord Ranin watching that.
“Alright,
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