PREVIOUSLY: Like a substantial minority of the biologically male orphans, slaves, and refugees “adopted” into Channah’s global family of proto-operatives, Chas and the slightly-younger Penny had been raised as transgender girls. Upon Penny’s eighteenth birthday, they had undergone the hazing and trials to become jariya women: For six days and nights they were guilted, punished, trained, seduced, subjugated, intimidated, cajoled, drugged, teased, confused, gaslit, sleep-deprived, tormented, and broken to the ultimate will of the succubae. But unlike almost any of the orphans, their wedding to Channah as her 35th and 36th sisterwives—her first human brides in centuries—had comprised the last phase of those trials. After suffering the Seven Indignities, the protracted ceremonies allowing the girls to demonstrate their loyalty and worthiness through their submission and suffering, they had finally been allowed to sleep. NOW:
Graduation
The girls were awakened by the smell of hot eggs and bacon, their first hint they had been allowed to oversleep. Blinking and rubbing their eyes like schoolchildren, they discovered the sun was well up in the sky, although from the North-facing windows they could not see its exact angle. They were where they had fallen asleep the previous night, on futons laid on flattened pews in what they could not help thinking of as a private chapel but, as a desecrated church that had never been restored, had been taken by hell as a satanikoklus of the succubae.
Sindonie, their governess of a decade, sat smiling across from them on an uncovered pew. As always, she was practically, if exquisitely, dressed, reflecting at once her personality and class. There could be no doubt she was a member of the gentry, England’s lower nobility. Her clothing was neat, to all appearances unworn, made of the finest cloths not reserved for upper nobility. The girls could not remember ever having seen her disarrayed, or even with a scuff on her boot or a single hair out of place beneath her hood; certainly nothing as vulgar as being sweaty or dirty, no matter the temperature. But typically for her, atypically for her class, she wore little or no jewelry, the cuts of her dresses were simple with clean lines, and she avoided fashions like tall heels or dress loops that would hamper her movements.
Between them stood a low table, cleared of the night’s empty cups and wine bottles, now filled with a silver tray loaded with the eggs and bacon they had smelled, as well as breads, sweetbreads, water, milk, sugar, and a hot pot of something having a strong and brisk odor they had never smelled before.
“Mistress Sindonie, is this for us?” Penny marveled.
“Yes, it is,” she beamed.
“And you brought it to us?!” Chas wondered.
“I did,” she nodded, cocking one eyebrow as if to say “can you believe that?” “I even boiled the qahwah myself, because it is considered a secret of the Court. So you’re not to speak of it to outsiders.”
Since they didn’t even know what qahwah was, they weren’t worried about spilling the beans, so to speak. Instead they looked at one another, somewhere between dazed and amazed, before Penny asked quietly: “Mistress, are we part of the Court of Lust now?”
She smiled again, warmly, and nodded. “You are. You’re still not quite fully married, but you have completed the trials—and before you start looking worried, don’t. You’ve endured the trials and passed the tests. The hard part is done, now it’s time for your reward. You and the other members of your class will be formally initiated into the Court of Lust when you return.”
“Return?” Penny asked, a little anxiously.
“Reward?” Chas asked, a little hopefully.
“From your honeymoon with Channah! Which is a celebration, mind you, my dour little Penny—a celebration for all three of you to bond in seclusion and seal your marriage—not a challenge.” Meeting their eyes for a moment, and reading them instantly, she tossed her head to one side. “Do your business, girls. There’s a screen over there if you’re still feeling modest. Although,” she snickered, “It may be a little late for that, from what I heard.”
Both boys blushed, intensely. “Mistress!” they chorused in protest to their childhood governess, both opting to scurry behind the screen, holding blankets around themselves for modesty, doubly happy to escape from her sight.
“I’ll always be your governess, but you’re adults now, girls.” And meeting their eyes as they returned, reading their minds as she so often seemed to do, she confirmed: “It’s much better to stay near the food. The chapel desperately needs a good airing-out. Big George modified the top of the windows so they can be opened to vent,” she nodded toward a thin strip of glass at the top of the stained-glass windows where George had painstakingly moved grout and glass from their original stone frames to metal ones mounted on hinges, “but they have to be small and high to keep prying eyes from seeing inside. So it will take awhile for this—” she smirked again, shaking her head and teasing them. “You girls’… scandalous activities….”
They both opened their mouths to protest but shut them decisively, reddening again.
“I had to bring your food because the human servants couldn’t be allowed in here to smell the—evidence of debauchery in the chapel, or find it filled with naked men and girls.” And without their having to ask, she again anticipated: “Your Dominae left yesterday—”
“Yesterday?!” they chorused.
“Yes, you’ve been asleep almost twenty hours. The men woke up earlier this morning.”
“Thank you for bringing us our breakfast—or dinner?—Mistress,” Penny bowed slightly in appreciation while Chas echoed him.
The Honeycomb
“You’re welcome.” She had been preparing two cups, putting milk and sugar in them before pouring a brown, almost bitter, stream of steaming-hot liquid into the two cups. “Qahwah,” she explained. “Because you girls are soft and sweet, I’ve put milk and sugar in it so it won’t be too strong for you. When you return from your honeymoon, if the Queen hasn’t taught you already, I’ll teach you girls how to make it for everyone.” She giggled. “You have to make it in the Countess’s bathroom, away from the eyes of cook and the kitchen maids.”
“What is it?” Penny asked. It was always Penny who asked.
“A hard little bean from a plant that grows far up the Blue Nile. It gives you energy and sharpens your mind. Now that you know who your Queen is—” she met their eyes briefly— “yes?”
“Yes, Mistress,” they nodded, still showing traces of the awe and anxiety they felt at the revelation.
“Penny told me,” Chas explained. “Although I can’t imagine—”
“You won’t have to, not for long,” she assured them. “The Queen will take you through the honeycomb in her realm to your honeymoon. It’s how she and members of the Court travel around the world.”
“Where are we going?”
Sindonie smiled. “I suspect I know, a particularly wonderful place she calls her natural cloister. But I’m certain she’ll want to tell you, or more likely show you, herself. The honeycomb is how the Court stays in communication with all our operatives, and the reason you were taught Arabic. The honeycomb is also how the qahwah came to England, from the Queen’s palace in Cairo. You know we have always discouraged you from drinking small beer, Chas?” Chas nodded slowly. “No discouragement required for our prudish little Penny, of course. Whose example should have illustrated the truth, that small beer for breakfast and dinner doesn’t actually protect health.” She shook her head. “Now you can both drink qahwah instead. Wine and spirits should be for celebration—or comfort—not for sustenance.”
“Why is it a secret?” Penny asked, beginning to eat with Chas.
CHAPTER SIX PART 44: “LE SACCAGE DE LA SALE BÊTE ROUGE (RAMPAGE OF THE DIRTY RED BEAST)”
2025-03-28 Literature Section “06-44 Hella Honeymoon I”—Accompanying Images: 1535-1538. 1170 words—©2025 The Remainderman. This is a work of fiction, not a book of suggestions. It’s filled with fantasies, idiots, and criminals. Don’t believe them or imitate them.