The girls complied with her command to hold hands with one another, making it all the better by their embarrassed expressions as they held hands. “For all the world, one would think you were perfect strangers asked to hold hands, rather than girls who grew up on the same estates.” Still squeezing her girls tightly, she turned and kissed each one on top of the head. “Or is your awkwardness because of past… familiarity?” She chuckled softly as they blushed and nearly pulled their hands apart.
“Whatever you have or have not been to one another, you’re sister-wives now—my sisterwives—and you will need to work and play as a team to please me. Practice makes perfect, and this is your chance to practice in security and safety. It will be just the three of us, for seven days and nights. As a Queen, my duties cannot be ignored for a week so I will have to hold Court and meet with my nobles and ministers each day, while you attend to me and take care of the chores. We will be alone, which means no servants. Sindonie has raised you properly, to remember your place is in service to me, and therefore, you now know, in service to my Court, and not to expect human servants dedicated to you, whatever the roles we play here at Fensmere Manor in front of outsiders. In addition to being a chance to spend quality time together and define our own relationship, it will be a chance to test yourselves and show me your joy in service of me, just as I take pleasure in serving the Realm. As always, you serve the Realm by serving me.
“To take an entire week with you girls, when I have two worlds’ full of operatives and servants to manage while fighting our war, should tell you how much you mean to me, and to the Realm.” She squeezed and kissed the tops of their heads again, more slowly and thoughtfully, as they shivered with pleasure.
The Contest for Souls
“Thank you, Domina,” Penny spoke from her heart, as she always did, the same reason she couldn’t stop herself there: “‘Our war…’”
Channah shook her head, knowing already what was coming. “Did you think I wouldn’t know what’s on your minds? What—I presume—has been on your mind since you first saw and felt the satanikoklus, Penny? Finish asking your question, sugarbear.”
“Are we? ‘At war?’” she asked quietly, uncomfortably.
“We are. Always and perpetually. It can be quite draining sometimes, especially to remain on top of our enemies as long as I have.”
“Domina…” Penny sounded like she was on the verge of crying. “Domina, who are we at war with?” Penny barely whispered, scared to death but asking it anyway. In her other arm, Chas remained silent, but her body tightened and coiled up as tightly as a spring, as tightly as Penny’s, telling her the question mattered deeply to both girls.
“Who do you think?” She asked, amused when Penny—who normally couldn’t keep her mouth shut to save her life, hesitated.
Finally, it gushed out: “Domina, as my guardian, you sent me to the Bishop of London’s grammar school for six years—”
“Me too!” Chas squeaked. “For seven!”
“And—and you let me—take vows at Cambridge—I know I should—I must—be defrocked now, but for the Lord not for me! I was studying canon law at Jesus College, Domina! How could you let me—how could you want me—?”
She burst out laughing. “Didn’t I just tell you these seven days are a special and safe time? Answer. My. Question.”
“Our Lord!” they both burst out, sounding agonized.
“What utter poppycock!” she chortled. “Certainly not! I sent your jawari sisters to grammar school as well. And your mamluk brothers as long as they could manage not to get kicked out, although a fat lot of good it did for them!” she rolled her eyes. “Do you have any idea how many girls and boys I’ve provided with religious training over the years?”
“No.” Penny whispered again.
“I was going to say, more than the Pope, but obviously that’s not true,” she conceded.
“I’m not saying I don’t have antipathy towards the Lord. The Lord banished us to hell. Do you think we find the climate there any more pleasurable than the human damned? We do not. It’s bloody awful. It’s one of the reasons I spend my time here! And we do fight organized religions whenever they get in our way, just like the human princes who battle with and try to control the church, and the human clergy who fight one another, and secular states. Because I paid for your educations, I know you both are well familiar with the war between the Ummah and the Body of Christ that has been raging for, literally, centuries? Going considerably better for Christianity in the West than the East these past decades.”
Both girls understood her reference to the West as the Reconquista, which had defeated the Emirate of Grenada, the last Muslim state in the Iberian peninsula, and restored Christianity throughout the Iberian peninsula thirty years earlier; and to the East as the Ottoman Empire’s seemingly inexorable advance, defeating the nearly 1,500-year-old Byzantine Empire seventy years ago, repeatedly defeating Habsburg, Venetian, Genoese, and Pisan interests in the years since, and occupying Rhodes only seven years before, ejecting the last of the Catholic military orders involved in the Crusades from the last of their territories in the Eastern Mediterranean.
“The Mahommedans?!” Penny and Chas burst out. “But they’re infidels!”
She snickered thoughtfully. “I have no interest in persuading you Muslims believe in the Lord, and that’s something I suppose theologians can reasonably argue. I’m all for human religions battling with one another. It’s most helpful.”
“But as your guardian, your education—good or bad—reflects on me personally, so I must explain to you, although there’s no perfect analogy, calling Muslims ‘Mahommedans’ is, to a Muslim, something close to a Catholic hearing themselves described as a ‘Peterite’ or a ‘Paulinite.’ Muslims consider Mohammad—and Jesus—to be prophets, not deities. Implying otherwise is simply inaccurate, so I won’t abide you speaking it out of ignorance. If you’re going to lie, do it on purpose, to deceive. If you’re going to speak the truth, trouble yourself to know what it is.”
“Yes, Domina,” they both reacted almost physically to the rebuke, as confused and anxious as they were ashamed.
Especially Penny, who was easy to sting by challenging the intelligence and education he treasured as a fundamental part of his identity; and who added, “I’m sorry, Domina.”
“It’s all right, dear,” she reassured her, leaning her cheek on Penny’s hair for a minute. “Humans make mistakes, and if they’re clever, they try to learn from them.”
Literature Section “06-48 Hella Honeymoon V”—Part 48 of Chapter Six, “Le Saccage de la Sale Bête Rouge” (“Rampage of the Dirty Red Beast”)—Continued from 06-47[X]—1149 words—Accompanying Images: 1549-1551. Published 2025-04-01—©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.