John Ringo - Emerald Sea

She found herself unable to sleep at night after the stresses of the first few days wore off. More often than not Shanea came by, scratching at her door. She’d at first expected the clique around Ashly to attack her in the middle of the night. Then she’d dreaded it. Then she’d anticipated it as something to break up the monotonous routine.

Christel left the harem to more or less run on its own. She spent all her time in the inner sanctum. Which left Ashly to run things. Badly.

Megan had taken to leaving the main room for most of the day, although Shanea was aghast at that as well. It Just Wasn’t Done. But Megan had to get some exercise. She retreated to her room and would spend hours in there, first limbering up, then doing katas, which segued into dance. Snatches of tunes would come to her mind and she danced to all of them, running one into the other as they could be recalled. She didn’t sing, she didn’t hum, she just danced, sometimes furiously, for hours.

She was getting to be in the best shape of her life. And she still was bored out of her gourd.

From time to time there had been verbal jabs from the girls around Ashly but since the incident with Karie nothing more. Then, at the end of the second week, when she had finished her sewing project, she returned to her room one afternoon, planning on getting in some solid exercise, to find that someone had placed the skirt and top on her pillows and then peed all over it and them.

She was pretty sure it wasn’t Karie. The girl was a bully of the first order and unlikely to want to brave her wrath again. But it meant it was probably one of the girls in Ashly’s little clique. And the way to deal with that was to kill the rot at the source.

She picked up all the material and walked through the main room to the baths with a sad expression of woeful misery on her face. Once in the bathroom she attacked the material, cleaning it as well as she could. The silks were too stained to be worth using, though, and all her work was ruined. She also couldn’t get the smell of pee entirely out of the pillows. It infuriated her that she’d have to live with that smell for who knew how long.

Somebody was gonna pay.

Megan waited a few days until the others had decided she’d decided to take the injury lying down. She had started work on another outfit and planned on making sure that this one was wearable. Then, one day, she noticed that Ashly was getting a bit squirmy and casually got to her feet, headed for the toilet.

The toilet was just off the bathroom and just as well appointed. There were more vanities inside as well as four stalls with doors so the girls could have some privacy. Megan waited in her stall until she heard someone come in and then walked out. When Ashly emerged from her stall, still adjusting her panties, Megan looked at her with eyes wide with sadness.

“Ashly, I know I’m not your friend, but it wasn’t nice for somebody to pee all over my bedding,” Megan said in her meekest little-girl voice.

“Well, I guess some of us just don’t like you,” the girl said dismissively. She was a head taller than Megan and carried herself with assurance.

“I was just hoping that maybe we could be friends,” Megan said. “I’d like for us to be friends.”

“Why would I want to be friends with a little turd like you?” Ashly said, brushing past her.

Megan waited until she was almost past and then drove a knuckled fist into the other girl’s solar plexus. When Ashly doubled up, choking, Megan lifted her by one shoulder and drove her fist into the girl’s stomach twice more.

“Well,” Megan said, neutrally, as she grabbed the girl by her long, blond hair and drove a knuckle into her kidney. “For one reason, I wouldn’t beat the shit out of you.”

Ashly fell to her knees and whimpered.

“Christel’s gonna…” the girl started to say, just as Megan grasped the base of the girl’s nose and pinched, hard. There was a very sensitive nerve juncture there and clamping down on it effectively ended rational thought for Ashly.

“Christel is going to what?” Megan said, sweetly. “I don’t think Christel is going to hear about this at all. Because if she does, you’re going to find out that this is love taps. Now, you’re going to talk to all of your friends. And you’re going to explain that the little games are stopping, aren’t you? Because if you don’t, we’ll have to… talk again. You might think that you can gang up on me, but if you do that it will be obvious. Besides, you might want to have a quiet chat with Karie about what happens when I get really angry. And then Christel is going to know. And then she’d better mind-wipe me. Because otherwise, you’re not going to be good for anything but a kitchen slut. Do I make myself clear?”

She didn’t wait for an answer. She just pinched the nerve point so hard the girl must have thought she’d been hit by a neural lash and then walked out, twitching her robe into place.

She didn’t know if the girl would take it lying down or not. But when she got back to the main room she gave Karie a significant nod and then strode over to Mirta.

“Hi,” she said, squatting down in front of the seamstress.

“Hi,” Mirta replied neutrally. “Could you move over, you’re in my light.”

“Sure,” Megan replied, moving over. “What do I have to do to get you to make me something?”

“Oh, I think you’ve already done it,” Mirta replied, lightly. She was hand-embroidering the edge of a bra that was made of silk so transparent it was like glass. “I’ve been waiting for months for someone to take down that arrogant bitch.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” Megan said with a broad smile.

“Yes, you do,” Mirta replied. “I wasn’t sure at first, but Karie steps aside when you walk past. And she never gives just one lesson to the new girls. She didn’t give me just one lesson,” the woman said in a low but fierce tone. “And I notice that Ashly seems to be taking a long time in her toilet. But she only went in there to pee. She’d have been out at least two minutes ago.”

“You notice a lot,” Megan said, sitting down.

“I notice that you spend a lot of time in your room,” Mirta replied. “That when you come out you usually go to the shower because you need it. I notice that you don’t walk quite like a dancer, either. You walk more like some martial artists I’ve known. You walk like a panther, except when you play that meek little girl role. I notice that you watch all the time, too.” She looked up and pinned the girl with her eye, tying off a section of the embroidery and picking up the next color without looking down. “And your hands have calluses. But not from sewing.”

“How old are you?” Megan asked.

“Me?” Mirta squeaked. “I’m just like you, just a little girl, not even twenty! And some man picked me up by the side of a stream and then… oh, it was So! Terrible!” The entire performance was delivered in a frightened little voice while cold eyes stared back at Megan.

“Yes, it is so terrible,” Megan replied neutrally. “Will you help me?”

“With sewing?” Mirta replied, finally looking down. “Happily.” She had been stitching the embroidery, tiny stitch after tiny stitch, without looking at what she was doing. And doing it perfectly.

“You do it so well,” Megan pressed.

“Most of my life,” Mirta replied. “My parents were reenactors. You know what that means?”

“Yes, people who had a hobby of doing stuff the old ways,” Megan said. “The town elders where I… was… were sort of like that. At least, they lived in an old house and had some stuff that they used from time to time.”