Talla's Fallen Temple Ch. 18

Beshenna

Kallidi, in her drab oranges, and Binyata, in her darkest blue, stood together in the long, shadowy hallway outside the open entrance to the Queen of Form's most intimate office."We've got nothing, really," Kallidi remarked, her eyes focused straight through the doorway to the where a woman with flaming red hair sat behind a monstrous oak desk.

"A warning," the Second replied, a look of chagrin on her face. "That's all."

Kallidi turned to look at her superior's face.

"You're disappointed."

"Am I?"

"You don't hide it well," Kallidi remarked. "But be honest. Whatever you'd like the truth to be, the evidence just isn't there."

Binyata took a deep breath and let out a sigh. She glanced back down the hallway through which they had entered into the Queen's Offices. Principia Form, with all its straight lines and taut banners, was a place that cried out for rules, demanded protocols and expected fair trials driven by high standards of proof.

"Endowment is right," Binyata said, turning away from those heartless straight lines. "We can't prove it, but she's right."

"You want it to be true," Kallidi dared to say, a note of accusation in her voice.

It was a tasteless gesture, really, accusing her superior of following emotion over evidence. She should have received a dressing down for her attitude.

Instead, Binyata let her eyes slide over the Officer lightly before she returned her gaze to the room ahead of them. There sat the Queen, looking slightly awkward in the odd shades of red she always had to wear to offset her complexion and hair colour, discussing some document or other with a handful of orange-clad Officers.

Kallidi looked up at her again.

"What are you going to tell her?"

"Let me ask you, Kallidi," Binyata spoke very slowly, in the manner of nursery teacher.

Somehow, that particular chiding tone made the question an even worse insult than what Kallidi had just laid on Binyata. The Officer barely managed to keep herself from taking a step back.

"I would tell her only what we can prove."

"So, nothing, then."

"Hardly nothing."

"Nothing we can prosecute," Binyata corrected, waving a hand to make the modification a trivial thing; causing Kallidi feel like a child again.

Indignantly, Kallidi turned to face down the length of the dark hallway once more, facing her Queen.

"It's the truth," she said, chin ticked up.

"Oh, indeed."

Kallidi felt slapped once more

"But I'm not in charge of this investigation," she said, still determined to save some kind of face, or at least keep her superior from doing something dumb. "What will you do?"

"I will -"

But Binyata's intentions were not to be announced in advance, because the warden just outside the door rapped the butt of her spear against the dark, wooden floor.

"Her Highness will see you now."

All further conversation quelled, the two women marched through the arched doorway into the brightly lit room beyond.

"Thank you," Binyata said.

One of the previous Queens of Form, some decades ago, had taken the opportunity to remodel the room along slightly different lines from the rest of Form. Instead of the rough, dark oak floorboard and panels that were the standard throughout this corner of the Temple, Principia Form had been done in a much smoother, lighter grade of wood. It made the place stand out, relatively speaking, but it also made it a breath of fresh air after waiting in the darkened hallway.

Consequently, the Queens of Form had always found that their visitors were quite relieved to step into this particular office.

The Queen chose to reinforce that feeling of comfort today by standing to receive her guests and putting them at ease with a kind smile on her face.

"Binyata, Kallidi," she called out, her voice making the address into a song. "Come around the desk."

The two women bowed, synchronized perfectly as they had been taught, and made their way around the desk as the Officers who had been attending the Queen swept past them.

"Chandra," the Queen spoke quietly, still standing. "Clear the room, please."

It was a simple command, made completely innocuous by the inflection in the Queen's voice. The door warden moved to obey in that quick but graceful way that appeared casual and unrushed.

"Attendants," the warden ordered.

Girls in knee length white skirts were almost like wall hangings. No one ever paid them much attention until a message needed delivering or some item needed fetching. At that point, a woman of high rank simply snapped her fingers and the next in line would jump forward to obey without a moment's hesitation. There were always such girls in any office, usually a pool of them shared by a number of women with real work to do. It was considered a sort of apprenticeship, so that younger ones could watch their experienced elders and see how things were done.

In a Queen's Office, however, there were perpetually six such Virgins, prepared for any manner of duty, and all came to attention at the Warden's call.

"Clear the room," the warden announced, knowing that it was her job to be loud where her Highness preferred to speak softly.

The Virgins, less graceful than their minder, quickly trotted out into the hallway with the warden, who pulled the heavy doors closed behind her.

Once the doors were sealed shut, the Queen's demeanour became considerably colder. She sat in her wooden chair and crossed her legs.

"What have you to report?"

Kallidi turned a nervous eye towards her superior.

"The Queen of Endowment, though fervent in her allegations, has no evidence," Binyata replied, keeping her voice as devoid of emotion as possible. "We have followed every lead Her Highness has offered, traced every child that we can trace. There is nothing we can take before an Adjudicate or Tribunal of any kind in order to prosecute either the Goddess herself or any member of the Discipline of Pussy."

Form, her face utterly passive and her body completely still, considered this for a moment.

"What have you discovered?"

"On very rare occasions, there are what appear to be errors in the records. That is all."

The Queen stared, not at Binyata, but into the space between her and Kallidi.

"Of what sort?"

"A child recorded as deceased will turn out to be alive," Binyata said. "In other cases, infant nurseries will appear to be processing more clothing, milk or bedding than is appropriate for the number of infants that are supposed to be present."

"No one is aware of your investigation?"

This question, delivered absolutely deadpan, was the most critical.

"No, Highness," Binyata replied, mirroring her superior's neutral tone. "All of the collation was done here, based on records to which we normally have access."

The Queen stood up quite suddenly, brushed tresses of red hair back over her shoulders, and walked toward the nearest window. Facing away from her two guests, she folded her arms and gazed out at a sky composed of many of the same reds from which her body was made.

"What does it mean, Binyata?"

"Nothing, Highness."

There was the tiniest of ticks in the Queen's shoulders. It might have been the start of a laugh.

"What do you think it means, Binyata?"

This was an entirely different question.

"My opinion?"

"Yes."

"They're hiding babies," Binyata said instantly, her voice twisting suddenly with cold, angry denunciation. "Pussy has never given up its meddling in breeding humans. What they're up to this time and why, I have no idea. I'd need to be able to get into that basement."

"The records from which we have barred ourselves," the Queen remarked, a hint of resignation in her voice.

This stirred Kallidi from her nervous silence.

"Barred ourselves, Highness?"

The Queen turned around to face her Officers again, taking the chance to lean against the window sill.

"Yes," she replied. "Didn't you know? It was our own desire to wipe out nepotism. We pushed through a rule, with the approval of all Disciplines, that the genealogies be sealed against all intrusion. We wished that, eventually, even a mother should not know her children. If ancestry is anonymous, then every woman will succeed only on her merits. A brilliant and noble idea, was it not?"

Kallidi straightened indignantly, her eyes widening.

"Of course!" she exclaimed. She would have risen from her seat if only she'd had the foresight to be sitting. "It should be no other way!"

This was, for any woman in the Temple -- and Form especially -- as primal an axiom as there could be.

"But incest, Kallidi," the Queen hissed, using the full force of eleven Facial upgrades to give her voice the silken smoothness that brought forth an image of a snake in the grass. "What shall we do about incest?"

Kallidi froze, for such was the power of the Queen's voice. A Lesson was about to be delivered, and there was nought for a schoolgirl to do but wait for wisdom to pour into her ears.

"That was Pussy's excuse," the woman in red explained, her voice gone simple with sarcasm.

The Queen's eyes turned to the ground. One imagined that her vision was focused at exactly the right angle, were there no walls or floors to intervene, to stare directly into that distant trove of records.

"They needed to prevent incest. So the records are kept, in giant vaults in the basement of Sweetness' Offices. These are carefully guarded, of course, to prevent women from nepotism and bias."

Half of a smirk came to the Queen's lips.

"Carefully guarded by the very women who should be watching over Pussy's shoulders, but aren't permitted past the gates."

She walked slowly, thoughtfully, back to her seat and took it once more, crossing her legs as before, letting the red panels of fabric drape off the sides of her chair to reveal great lengths of hard, muscled thigh.

"They preserve the safety of our genetic legacy," the Queen said. "So we let them be the only ones who are permitted to see the genealogies."

She closed her eyes as her right hand reached up to rub her temple thoughtfully.

"What a mistake that was," she concluded.

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Gern

While Beshenna's Queen of Form was busy plotting her way through the subtle, internecine warfare of her city's Temple, the woman who held the same position in Gern had other things on her mind -- and her body.

Draped upon her hard, beautiful shape were the limbs of a Master Fighter, Commander of all military forces in the city of Gern, Kendrick himself.

On her mind was his odd behaviour.

Certainly he'd done his job. They'd had sex twice already -- once facing each other and the second time from behind so she could enjoy the full luxury of his tremendously strong hands striking her cheeks time and again.

And yet, something was missing. There was a certain feeling coming from the man that just didn't fit. There was a resistance or a hesitation, perhaps even a lack of confidence.

She had certainly seen that sort of thing among those she Served in her bed. It was often daunting, especially for the first-timers, to be called to the quarters of a Queen. There was a long walk from the gate, full of anticipation and anxiety, before she even saw them. She knew that sort of thing could take its toll.

None of that had ever managed to interfere with her plans. There wasn't a man in the world she couldn't bring to erection with her tongue, no matter how shy or nervous. In a moment, she would use those very skills to bring Master Kendrick around for his third go. How should they do it this time? Should she be on top? There was no need to limit him to his hand, either, as far as that sort of thing went.

But what of his strange attitude? She was a Queen, with thirty three upgrades in Form -- including the eleven that made a Perfection of Facial. She knew when things were going on behind people's eyes.

She tilted her head so her cheek rested against his as they both looked toward the ceiling. She set her voice with just the right amount of awe and a touch of playfulness.

"Tell me of your work, Master Fighter," she whispered.

It was flattery of the highest kind, for a Queen to address a man not by his name but by his rank.

"Our soldiers are strong," he said, softly rolling his 'r's in that odd brogue he'd brought with him from the far north. "Lean and resilient."

And again, the tone was wrong. It should have been brash, resilient and full of pride. Instead, the voice was flat, almost uncertain, even a touch defensive.

The Queen paused uncertainly.

"You will find the lads ready for anything," he went on, like a teacher describing her students. "When I came to Gern, they had not the wit to take down a pack of barbarians without taking great casualties themselves."

He paused a moment before inhaling and puffing his chest out just slightly.

"Today they are competent. They go where they wish, their eyes always open. They survive their battles, capturing whom they can, killing those they must."

Entranced, the Queen listened to his deep, rolling voice describe the history of the military forces since he had taken command almost a decade ago. She had not been a Queen then, for no women could hold so many Perfections for so long. Coming up through Tight, she had been wearing Officer's orange when Kendrick had arrived. She'd seen him then, when the assembled forces of the city had greeted their new Commander, and she'd been impressed with the cold, dangerous competence in his eyes.

The woman who had been running Form at the time had introduced him, explaining that he came fresh from the North, that mystical place where the weather could turn so cold women covered themselves neck to ankle for many weeks of the year. And not just the North, but the Frontier, where armies of organized men still attacked Temples.

When she'd first looked upon the man, she'd seen all of that, for he had walked every step with that experience at his back and legions of dead haunting his eyes.

She'd never forgotten that stark, bold first impression.

The man still walked that way to this day, and deserved every hint of bravado he carried.

In the months that had followed that arrival, and not without an indecent amount of caterwauling from the rank, file and Offices, he had torn apart their military structure and built it anew. His purpose in coming to Gern had been the passing on of what the Frontier had taught him of fighting.

When the complaining had ended, the men were better drilled, fitter and ten times less likely to die in combat. Most importantly, they now trained with the women, instead of being thrown together moments before a patrol.

Those protests had been memorable. Oh, the Protocols! Men and women sleeping in the same barracks? Women Serving arbitrarily as mission details permitted? And what of all the rituals Kendrick had brought with him from the North? The units were cohesive, but at what cost in perversion of the natural order?

The Queen smiled at the memory. She'd been just low enough in rank to participate in a few of those "perversions".

No one doubted Kendrick now.

She, on the other hand, had never doubted him in the first place.

This was why he came so often to her bed. There were rules about such things, of course, Monogamy being the curse word that it was. So she obeyed the rules and used her authority as a Queen to call him just slightly less often than was allowed, keeping a margin just for the sake of propriety.

Still, she looked upon him with a tinge of possessiveness that brought her a certain nagging guilt which occasionally had to be expunged.

She prompted him now, with little noises, and listened sweetly as he described those first, pitched battles with roaming barbarians. He spoke of how disappointed he had been at the sloppiness of Gern's soldiers, how such carelessness would have seen whole units obliterated had they been forced to fight at the Frontier.

He went on to tell of the methods he had used to select new leaders and train them to train others, how he'd built up his soldiers into the force they were today.

She knew the whole story by heart, having lived it, but hearing him tell it from his point of view, with that touch of pride and mysterious sadness he'd brought with him today, made it seem new again -- made her feel young again - like a Virgin taking the first mandated history lessons.

"You have saved many lives, Master Fighter," she said, when the telling was done, and there was no need to pitch her voice, for her expression of awe was a thing of honesty.

"Aye, Highness," he said, his voice a distant, rumbling thunder. "That I have."

She felt suddenly giddy with excitement, remembering who she had been and the thrill that Officer would have felt to know that she would someday be a Queen sharing her bed with the great man she had just met. How old had she been? Twenty five or twenty six? He had been thirty, but the darkness in his eyes had given him so many more years.

With a quick kiss on his forehead, she began sliding down the bed towards his flaccid member. Rising on all fours, she let her breasts swing over that manhood, the nipples grazing him lightly. She supposed, if she wanted, she could bring him back up with those. There was a bit of milk in them yet, as women with so many Endowment upgrades always kept themselves up, given its medicinal value. Fed to a man, or squeezed out over his penis, it could prove quite useful.

This Queen, however, was of Form and while she was certainly willing to use her breasts and their milk to Serve the men in her bed, her pride on her behalf of her Division always directed her elsewhere.

Where the breasts had been, the mouth went, taking in that soft member and swirling it inside. She tasted their previous encounters, the semen, sweat and the tang of her own juices. The magic that was her Perfection began to work and she heard Kendrick sigh as she felt him harden in her mouth.

This was satisfying to her, that all the work she had done to attain this rank and these upgrades was put to the use of Serving the man she had long considered the best of all of them.

When his erection reached what she knew by long experience to be its full size, an urge struck her so strongly that she almost carried through. What a surprise it would be for him if she took him all the way? Grasping the base of his shaft, for he was too long to fit entirely in her mouth no matter how she angled her neck, she began stroking him gently.

Could she? Queens didn't really do that sort of thing, leaving the mouths full of semen to other women sent to reward particularly Heroic men on the eve or conclusion of some great deed.

But what of this man? Was he not one of the greats? Had he not earned it? And who better than she to make that judgement and deliver the prize?

She paused in her stroking.

There was, after all, that other urge to take care of. That had to go first, all things considered, didn't it? Perhaps if he was able to go a fourth time, she could deliver that special treat. If not, he would be back in a few months, wouldn't he?

She slid him out of her mouth, giving one last, long lick to the swollen head of his shaft.

"Up," she said to him, for that word was all that was needed between two who had shared a bed so many times.

"I can never un'erstand, Highness," he said with a shake of his head. "How this works for you without the mesh."

"Fret not, my dear Master Fighter," she replied smoothly. "My needs are unlike yours."

It was not the first time she'd ask him to do this, so he knew well where to find the device she needed. It was always in the top drawer of the nightstand by her bed, neatly curled up. She took her place with her feet on the floor, leaning her sweat tacked upper body over the rumpled, red sheets.