F Campbell - Chain of Jedrah

“There is much work to do,” Yasin continued musingly. “Yes, Lord.” Rannah’s breakfast lay mostly uneaten, she sipped her coffee absently.

“It would seem very little has been done.” His words drifted like clouds across the sun.

“The fault is mine, Lord.”

The captive girl knew herself lost in what was taking place around her. New forces were at work. Tentatively she moved her feet in a motion of disquiet, testing the chains locked on her ankles and the pain of her bruised flesh. Her handcuffs had disappeared, she felt naked without them even though she was now clothed by Yasin’s wish. But the chain joining her feet hobbled her far more helplessly, the metal bands round each ankle were heavy and demanding with each step. She had been obliged to learn to walk again. But now, thanks to Yousef, she walked in pain.

“And why your fault, child?”

Rannah motioned listlessly. “You know my fault, Lord. I will not excuse it.”

Mohammad Yasin sighed. “This girl we hold for torture: she has a terrible potency. She has made you as much captive as herself.”

Rannah remained silent, vividly aware.

Yasin’s eyes as he gazed at Stacie were kind. “You have not known, child, that here in Jedrah this woman love you have practiced with this wayward girl is punished by death or mutilation.”

She looked at him askance. Once more her world collapsed.

“Death! You mean that we . . . ?”

Yasin laughed, delighted by her responsive fear. “No, child, I speak of the Jedrah beyond these walls.”

Her ankle links rattled as she stirred in perturbation.

Dark eyes smiled back at her in reassurance without joy. Striving to come to grips with things unsaid she turned appealingly to Yasin. “Please, Master, if I have done wrong punish me. Do not blame my Lady Rannah.”

He looked at her with an impatient tenderness. “You are as besotted with my daughter as she with you.”

Both of them laughed at her disbelief.

“There was no need to tell you. It alters nothing,” Rannah said simply.

“I am very proud of she who bears my name.” In Yasin’s words was love.

“Then it was she . . . !” Stacie was blushing.

“Yes, it was me with whom your father’s crew had their sport,” Rannah laughed drily. “I tried to hate you for it but I failed. I cannot hate you, no one can. You have even touched the heart of Yousef: though you believe it not. Salim worships you. Next to our Lord, my father, it is you I hold most dear.”

Stacie’s world reassembled itself. She turned glowing eyes on the man who owned her. “Your daughter, Master: then you will not punish-”

The wave of his hand broke across her sentence. “A father who fails to punish serves neither his honour or his child.” He quoted coldly. “Ask she whom you love if this is not so.”

Rannah smiled lovingly into her slave girl’s anxious gaze.

“My father speaks truth, slave girl. Should he condone my guilt it would weaken all of us. Come, smile. We are not to die.”

Mohammad Yasin struck the gong. When Yousef came he smiled. He knew!

“You will take the Lady Rannah and give her twenty strokes with the kurbash.”

Yasin said without emotion. “Draw blood if you must, but not prodigiously. Fasten her in readiness, but hold your hand. This child must witness the punishment.”

It was as though rehearsed. Tradition had written the script, honour enacted it. Rannah heard her frightening sentence without visible emotion. Her first thought was of the girl she loved, she gave Stacie a reassuring and admonitory smile. Without a word she knelt before her father and kissed his hand. For a moment they lingered thus his fingers affectionate in her hair, his eyes sad but proud. Then, in serenity and purpose, the daughter of Mohammad Yasin preceded Yasin the torturer from the balcony.

“Please, Master, punish me instead. I love her.”

His regard was curious. “She has told me of this trait in you,” he acknowledged meditatively. “It is quite charming and clutches at the heart. I believe you truly would follow and exchange places?”

“Yes Master. Please give me permission.”

“If you were of Jedrah you would know the absurdity of your request. By our standards it has a certain impropriety meriting its own penalty.”

“I will accept the penalty, Master, if I may ease my Lady.” Yasin laughed at her solemnity. “You had best halt your submissiveness before it provokes me into erotically desiring to whip you myself. You exude an astounding sexuality. Cease your talk of punishments.”

She sighed in defeat. “I am not happy, Master. I am fearful for my Lady.”

“You are not supposed to be happy this day. Let it not concern you.”

“Master, may I speak of myself?”

“Of course, child, you are concerned with your torture?”

“Yes, Master. Has . . . what has been done to me sufficed?”

“If you are petitioning, come kneel before me as a slave girl should.”

Awkwardly in her new chains Stacie obeyed. Yasin turned his chair to face her. “Why do you call me ‘child’, Master? I am a woman.”

Again she had aroused him. “You are many times woman, your blood is hot, your breasts are ripe.” His voice gained tenderness, “But there is in you an eternal child, an endearing quality by which you defeat us all. Cherish it.”

She could not know. Jedrah taught a girl strange things about herself. If this masculine male saw her as a little girl she felt no affront. “Would you torture a child, Master?” she asked slyly.

“In the same way I whip a daughter,” he acknowledged. Jedrah held her captive too, not this man alone. Jedrah rationalized the unbelievable. She looked up, hoping he found her lovely. “Must I go on being tortured, Master? Are there not enough pictures?”

“If the tortures and the pictures are done, what should I do with you?”

“Send me back to my father’s house, Master.” Her suggestion was delicately tentative.

The atmosphere was charged. She hoped he could not see her tremble. Stacie knew how easily she could trespass on his tolerance.

“I had intended to torture you for months or years.” It was as though he was speaking to himself.

She kept a prudent silence.

He shook his head in wonder and amusement. “You have seduced us both with your witchery. Perhaps I should have a stake planted in the ground, tie you to it and have you burned.”

“Yes, Master.”

He slapped his leg in delight. “The way you say that I could believe you mean it. This submissiveness of yours is a menace. You subvert us all.”

His pleasure infected her with mischief. “I have not known I was a witch, Master.”

“Well, know it now.” Thoughtfully he tossed her a key and watched her face. She examined it, unsure, doubting. “For what, Master?”

“Your shackles. Unlock yourself and go.”

He was not jesting, she could tell. She looked at the small key within her hand. It had the weight of all the world. She looked up piteously. “I cannot.”

“There will be clothes and money.”

She examined the impossible and found a woman’s solution. “I will not go without, Rannah, Master.”

“Rannah is bound, awaiting punishment.”

“Yes, Master. I cannot leave her.”

“You quibble terms, child! I offer you freedom.” She twisted in misery. “I love her.”

“But you would leave me and my house?”

It was as though she saw him for the first time. Memory of the two nights was etched deep. It erased Yousef and his whip. She knew herself in the grip of some deeper slavery she could not name. She cast aside the word love as trite and unsatisfying. Here was something rich and wanton and darkly completing, it was of Jedrah. Stacie Blair had no weapons with which to combat it.