The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Alcaeus did not read the newspaper. His slaves did, though, habitually.

He wasn’t quite sure how the situation emerged, nor how it had persisted so long. When he gave the matter thought, it made him feel rather ridiculous. A number of daily or weekly periodicals were dropped off at his home, from the truly newsworthy to the flagrantly scurrilous. Initially, no bills for these were ever presented, their publishers obviously trying to curry favor with one of the city’s leading wizards; but he put a stop to that. The thing was, every time he paid these bills now, the absurdity of what he was doing struck home. He was only buying these papers for his sluts.

Being a slave owner, there were, quite understandably, certain expenses. There was food, naturally. There was clothing, flimsy slavewear notwithstanding. There was fuel, for heat and shelter. There were other things, all quite ordinary. Reading materials, on the other hand, were not exactly standard fare.

Slave girls were kept in order to be fucked, not educated.

Now, while it was true Alcaeus preferred his slave girls intelligent and to retain a sense of their own individuality, as opposed to what the Nycclethnim did to their sluts, he didn’t force them to be readers. They became that on their own. Yet that wasn’t even the ridiculous part: he wasn’t the type of owner to begrudge a slave taking a book down now and again from his library. Alcaeus read, but his own choice of reading matter did not concern the mundane affairs of the city. His slave girl, Leusa, though, after attending to him and her duties about the house, could frequently be found in quiet absorption of that day’s news, scanning every single line.

If it had been just her, Alcaeus could have put the matter to rest in his mind. He wouldn’t have felt this mild sense of chagrin that he was paying for something frivolous, something not for him at all but entirely for a mere slave, a mere fucktoy he kept for his amusement. But the fact was all his slave girls had developed this habit, including the otherwise dull but quite lovable Nessa, whom he had owned prior to Leusa. They didn’t pick up the habit from each other—he only owned the one slut at a time, and they had rarely even met—so they must have been picking it up from him.

And that’s what annoyed him, in a self-deprecating sort of way. He owned these girls for the pleasure they could give him. They were his entertainment; he was not obliged to provide them with any.

Yet every month he paid these bills for their account, and he couldn’t justify why.

Alcaeus snuck into his bedroom one night, tiptoeing, hoping to catch Leusa unawares, for his amusement and hers. Instead of taking her (and then taking her), he found her wide-eyed and misty over an article she was reading. The expression on her face chased his playful mood away at once.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, sitting beside her on the bed they shared, putting a hand on the lovely cheek of her exposed ass. She had been lying facedown, the paper beneath her ample breasts.

She tried to hide it first, but he read over her shoulder. The lead story concerned a noblewoman, the Lady Autora Aegamoi, charged with public sluttishness. With the new laws in force in De, which allowed for the enslavement of nobles, a guilty verdict in court would entail the Aegamoi’s reduction to bondage.

“I didn’t hear you, master,” Leusa replied, curling beneath the wizard’s touch, warming for him. “Master is sneaky. Master tries to take advantage of his poor, helpless slut again.” Though her words were playful, they lacked their usual ardor.

“Did you know her?” he asked, looking at the photograph of the woman. She was pretty.

Leusa handed him the paper. “Yes, master. I knew Autora when I was free. She is going to be made a slave.” According to the story, this Lady Autora had been caught fucking another noble, an unidentified man, in one of the city’s parks. Witnesses claimed she had been on her hands and knees, naked and screaming in submission, giving vent to loud self-proclamations of her own pleasure. If the story was true, had she not been noble, she likely would have been enslaved on the spot. De’s public morals laws were stringent, if somewhat hypocritically enforced.

“She was a friend?”

Unlike most Daoxechent slaves, Leusa retained memories of her previous life. “Yes, master,” she said. She turned over and wrapped her limbs about him. She rested her head on Alcaeus’ shoulder.

“A good friend?” She nodded. Despite her obvious sorrow, Leusa’s nipples were growing hard, her pussy wet. Her heat was obvious. But so too was her distress.

“She couldn’t have done this, master,” she told Alcaeus. “I don’t believe it.”

“No?”

“No, master. She was one of the friends I had that I could never speak with of my desire for submission and bondage. She would have shunned me, had she known the truth. She is very moral. This is unlike her, in every way.”

“She could have changed,” Alcaeus said, without force. “It’s been more than a year since you’ve seen her. She could have been under the influence of drink. Or even magic.”

“Yes, master.” She pressed herself against him.

Alcaeus read the article more closely. Eventually, he said, “Tomorrow, I think, I’ll visit a friend of mine at the Prefecture of Justice. Would you like to come along?” He continued to hold her tight.

Leusa didn’t answer for a moment, then she nodded.

The prefecture was a large building, with many rooms. It was a labyrinth. Upon arriving, Alcaeus grew confused and had to ask directions. At length, he stopped outside a chamber where a proceeding was taking place, interested. The subject of slave girls always interested him. Inside, he observed a beautiful young woman taking off a sheer white robe in front of a table. Three people were seated, two men and a woman. A fourth man, the woman’s advocate, was standing beside her and speaking.

“As you can see,” the man said, “she is beautiful enough already to be a slave.”

The girl flushed but kept silent. In point of fact, the fellow was right: the girl looked about twenty-five, was atypically blond for a Deinian, and was simply stunning. “If she volunteers for enslavement, we ask that her family receive three years of tax deferment instead of only the minimum two. Surely, she is worth it, gentlemen, grand lady.”

The people at the table conferred. The man in the middle, a prefect, spoke. “You are beautiful, my dear. Almost too beautiful. How have you managed to stay free so long, with your family so poor?”

The young woman looked down. The man beside her said something quietly in her ear, and she nodded. “My parents spent everything on me,” she said. “They hoped to marry me into a squire’s family. We had been very frugal. But after the accident when father broke his back, we had no choice but to go to a healing clinic.” Alcaeus nodded silently. He had worked in such clinics himself, often enough in his early career. The cures were instantaneous; the obligations, for the less fortunate, were almost always lifelong. “I was seen as a future investment and pampered throughout my life.” She suddenly looked up, defiant. “It’s time I paid them back. So make me a slave. Please. I beg you.”

Alcaeus felt Leusa rest her head on his shoulder. “She’s brave,” she whispered.

“Yes,” the wizard said.

The woman, a scarlet-haired Nyccleth wizard, spoke. “Is your father back on his feet?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And your family is otherwise well again? There is no congenital ill health, is there?”

“No, ma’am. They are well. My brothers are starting a chimney-sweep business. If it weren’t for our late taxes, we could . . we could . . . .” She started crying.

The three at the table conferred again. Eventually, the prefect acted as spokesman. “In exchange for your voluntary signature on a bill of enslavement, we will grant your family the requested deferment.”

The girl fell to her knees, weeping. “Thank you,” she cried out. “Thank you, thank you!”

“Why wait?” the woman-wizard said. She threw a small cloth bag at the advocate standing behind the girl. “Count it. The amount will cover three years taxes for her family, even minus your fee. I’ll take her now.” She stood, ignoring the visibly chafing prefect and the other man, an Ainchon wizard.

“But grand lady . . .” the advocate started to say (though he grabbed the bag and looked inside).

“But . . but I have to say goodbye . . .” the girl began; and then she stopped and stood, her entire posture and demeanor changing as the Nyccleth took over her mind. “Yes, she is rather beautiful, isn’t she?” the woman-wizard asked rhetorically. “I may take her home and add her to my personal stable.”

The girl, now a slave, walked robotically over to her; and the wizard began examining her natural body, very personally. Alcaeus, disparaging such rampant discourtesy, left, Leusa trailing him.

Not for the first time, he asked himself what in the hells was wrong with the Nycclethnim?

The wizard stopped a prefect’s aide, and he gave the two of them better directions. Alcaeus’ friend Odysto was another master-practitioner of the Ainchonnim. Unlike Alcaeus, he worked exclusively in concert with the City of De’s justice system. Eventually, he found Odysto in another courtroom.

“Am I interrupting?” Alcaeus asked. In the docket at the end of the room, flanked by two prefecture guards, was a nude captive, a man, obviously brought in shortly before Alcaeus and Leusa had arrived.

Alcaeus recognized the prisoner’s face in passing from a photograph he had seen in the newspaper last night, but he couldn’t name him. The fellow’s wrists and ankles were shackled in iron. Every few moments he doggedly tried to pull himself free from his warders. The prisoner was gagged. He was young and hairy. He also looked extremely frightened.

“No, not at all. His name was Philoco Thes,” Odysto said, deliberately using the past tense. He waved Alcaeus in. “Guards, you can leave him. Thank you.”

The wizard was a tall, handsome, well-built man, with several inches on Alcaeus. The muscles were all for show, however, purely the product of magic.

The guards secured the prisoner’s chains to a bench, then left through another exit.

“He was a thief,” Odysto went on. “He was convicted for his second offense only this morning.” Alcaeus nodded, understanding. A second conviction for thievery, and most other crimes in De, automatically entailed enslavement. For men, anyway: for non-noble women, enslavement was usually the first sentence handed down by the prefects.

De’s justice system was not gender equitable: the demand for slave girls was too high.

The two men-wizards embraced and exchanged pleasantries while Leusa found a place to kneel unobtrusively. The prisoner, Thes, tried to break free again. His eyes were panic-stricken. In a way, at the moment, the convicted thief was in limbo. He both was and wasn’t a slave. Legally speaking, he was: his Deinian citizenship had been forfeited, and his conviction had stripped him of his freedom.

Practically speaking, though, complete and total enslavement in contemporary De and the rest of the island-republics necessitated the magical transformation of one into a slave, meaning the permanent alteration of either or both the subject’s mind and body. Before the Wizard Peace, there had been many non-magical slaves. Now, there were almost none. “Do you mind if I do him first, then we can both be comfortable?” Odysto asked. Alcaeus replied, “Of course.” It was bad form to leave someone in a legal halfway point. Beyond the inherent impoliteness, partial enslavement still left the possibility of escape. Once under some form of magical control, this would no longer be a concern.

The Man-Wizard Odysto stood atop a short block set before the wooden docket, which gave him a commanding presence over any prisoner.

“I’ll just set some basic controls,” he said to Alcaeus, “and then we can talk like gentlemen.” He turned his attention to the man in shackles. Odysto opened the book in front of him, set on a pedestal, and raised his hands. Philoco Thes gave one last pull on his chains, then froze in place and straightened as the prefecture wizard took control of his mind. The thief’s eyes widened and his mouth opened as the words Odysto spoke washed over him.

A few minutes later the shackles were no longer necessary. Released physically, the former thief calmly walked around the docket and stood beside Odysto as the wizard sat across from Alcaeus and Leusa.

As Alcaeus had expected, the first thing Odysto did was examine the enslaved man’s penis.

“Oh, what a lovely cock you have,” Odysto said, wetting his finger and rubbing it along the shaft, eliciting shivers. At his prompting, both physical and magical, the new slave grew hugely erect. “Don’t you think so, Alcaeus?”

“I’m not as interested in the subject as you are, Od,” Alcaeus dryly replied.

Alcaeus sent a casual probe into the new slave’s mind: his colleague’s abbreviated enchantment had stripped the convicted thief of his willpower but left his faculties intact, including his disgust at being pawed at by the man-wizard. Inside his head, the thief was screaming in anger and terror. Yet Alcaeus felt little sympathy. He was all for law and order.

Odysto shrugged. Then he wrinkled up his nose. “All that has to go, though.” The wizard closed his eyes and lifted a hand. He spoke a set of formulae. The brown fuzz from the thief’s hirsute body fell away in waves of Odysto’s fingers. The strands disintegrated before they struck the floor. “There. That’s much better,” the wizard said. After a few moments, the only hair on the man’s body was on his head. The rest of him was as bare as if he had just come from a very thorough waxing. Another wave from Odysto restyled the man’s remaining hair and changed its color slightly, lightening him up a bit.

Even Alcaeus thought the change was an improvement.

“Your name is now ‘Philoco.’ It is only ‘Philoco.’ Do you understand?”

“Yes, master.” Alcaeus felt the man’s mind reel as this magical injunction took place.

“Do you like me touching you like this, Philoco?” Odysto asked, as he fondled him.

“No, master,” the man said. “And . . . yes.” His priorities were changing even as he stood there.

“Have you ever given a blowjob before?”

“No, master.” The tone was calm. Inside was another matter entirely, though already Odysto’s magic was having its desired effect. The slave’s arousal was becoming stronger by the minute, obviously so.

Again, Odysto shrugged. “No matter. I’m going to give you a test, young man, right now. If you do well, I’ll make you a slave boy. You’ll live a spoiled life being the fucktoy of some wealthy man or woman, like my friend’s slut here. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

“No, master.”

A third shrug. “On the other hand, if you fail, I’ll make you a laborer slave, which would be unfortunate.” He gripped the man’s penis, causing him to stiffen, both bodily and in the proximity held. “It’s no fun being a gelding.” Alcaeus felt Odysto exert himself psychically. The thief knelt before him as the wizard undid his trousers. “Shall we get comfortable, Alcaeus?” Odysto asked.

“Leusa,” Alcaeus said. It was all the command necessary. “Yes, master,” his slave girl said, excited, and took up a matching position in front of him. Alcaeus wasn’t usually so immodest as this; but he and Odysto had been friends for a long time; and Odysto had well-known and rather distinctive ideas about what he considered “comfort.” Besides, it was he calling upon him rather than the other way round.

Leusa’s mouth settled onto Alcaeus’ cock and began its charming work. Across from him, Philoco was likewise fulfilling his new function in society.

“So,” Odysto said, as he leaned back and put his hand on the new slave’s curly hair, “what can I do for you, old friend?”

“Tell me about this noblewoman who has been sentenced to slavery for public sluttishness. Autora.”

“The case was clear-cut. She was caught on her hands and knees, in a clearing in the city park, half-dressed, receiving a fucking from one of the Megeuce heirs.” He patted Philoco’s head. “Her face was covered in his cum. Her breath reeked of alcohol. She had clearly broken the law.”

“Was she scanned?” He meant for magical influences.

Odysto nodded. “It was one of the first things done. Both the constables and the noblewoman herself demanded it, after she sobered up. A Nyccleth woman-wizard named Rilessa assisted. She said she detected no enchantments.”

“Do you believe her?”

“Strangely enough, I do. She had no reason to lie. Rilessa’s the type of person who if she wanted to screw you, she’d tell you straight to your face, so she could watch you suffer. I find you can trust nastiness like that to remain consistently nasty. It would be beneath her to lie.” He stopped for a moment, closing his eyes. “Slower, Philoco. Take your time. Enjoy.” The slave slurped around his cock. Alcaeus didn’t need to give Leusa instruction. She was already an expert in this delicious craft.

“To be honest,” Odysto went on, eventually, “Autora wouldn’t have been charged if she hadn’t decided to go down on that man in exactly the wrong place at exactly the wrong time. She could have bribed her way out. But a certain Lady Hierite came across the two of them with her entourage, half-dressed and going at it, as she was on her weekly promenade through the park. She’s the one who persuaded the Senate to go through with the charges.”

Alcaeus was unfamiliar with the name. It hadn’t been in the paper, either. “Who is Lady Hierite?”

“Lady Hierite Aias,” Odysto said. “She’s old, political, and a traditionalist. She claimed she was ‘profoundly scandalized’ by Lady Autora’s depravity.” The wizard snickered. “She wanted to charge the Megeuce boy, too, come to think of it. But he managed to wheedle his way out.” The law in De wasn’t anywhere as strict with men, and especially noblemen.

They were silent for a few minutes. The only sounds in the room were enthusiastic slurping and an occasional moan of pleasure.

“She’ll testify?” Alcaeus said after a bit. He had grown distracted. “Hierite, I mean.”

“She . . . ah . . . has already submitted a written account, Caeus. Likely, that will end up in the newspaper, too, suitably edited to exclude her name. She’s the type who never shows up in public. Autora’s conviction is a foregone conclusion. She’ll be on her way to Daox before the end of the month, if the Nycclethnim don’t put in a bid.” Most slave girls in De had their origins either with the Nycclethnim or the Pecthentnim, the latter through the agency of the Lords of Daox.

Odysto breathed in sharply through his nostrils while leaning his head back onto his chair. He finally came inside Philoco’s mouth, his hand clenched in the man’s now curly hair. Alcaeus allowed himself to release too. Leusa gulped at him happily, touching herself between her legs as she sucked him.

Later, both slaves licked their masters clean again.

Philoco gazed up at Odysto. “Well?” the man-wizard asked the slave. “Did you enjoy that? Tell me the truth.” As if he had a choice . . . .

“Yes, master,” Philoco said. “I . . I love the taste of cum. Please, please master . . . may I have some more?” His cock was visibly throbbing. The Ainchonnim spell was working well on him. That evening, Odysto would complete his set of transformations on the man; and then a man he would no longer be, but merely an Ainchon slave boy, his mind permanently reconfigured for sexual service and submission.

“Do you think you passed your little test, young man?”

Alcaeus pressed his lips together in disapproval. “Don’t tease the boy, Od. When was the last time, seriously, you gelded someone?” It was more likely his friend would do the opposite and not only enhance Philoco but give him a permanent erection, its biology sustainable only through magic.

“I suppose you’re right,” Odysto said, eyes rolling. He motioned with his fingers, and Philoco stood so that soon-to-be mighty organ was near the wizard’s face. “It’s unprofessional of me, I know. But I just so hate to waste a good cock.”

When a person was enslaved by a wizard, the best thing to do, societally speaking, was to consider that individual dead. Any legacy he or she had had prior to the enslavement was acted upon. Property not claimed by legatees was seized by the state. Friends and relatives were encouraged to ignore the new slave. Fathers would disown enslaved daughters, mothers their sons. Surviving marital partners were considered widows. Deinian etiquette, which like that island’s language and culinary customs, prevailed throughout the republics: it was considered uncouth to own a slave in the same vicinity where he or she had dwelt whilst free, thereby saving intimates the daily burden of having to tear out their own hearts.

Aside from the emotional considerations, there were practical reasons for this convention. Slaves were not considered people anymore. They were property. Owners could do almost anything they wanted to their slaves, even kill them (actually, that fell under the same laws as animal cruelty; a fine might be leveled, but the death was not considered murder).

Even more practically, those enslaved by wizards were often radically transformed in body and/or mind. Hence, often, in a very real sense, the person he or she had been while free no longer existed.

There was no reason why Alcaeus should have had to look into the circumstances of Autora’s pending enslavement. Just because his Leusa was the exception to the rule and remembered the friends and people she had known while free, and just because he loved her, there was no expectation that he should have to investigate. Leusa, certainly, had not expected it of him when he had begun doing so.

So why was he doing so? Clearly it was love. Alcaeus deliberately chose not to think about such matters too closely.

The day after his visit to the Prefecture of Justice, Alcaeus went to interview Autora herself. Because she was still a noblewoman, for the time being, she had been allowed to remain at her residency under house arrest. For the interview, Alcaeus left Leusa at home, both because the wizard didn’t want to further upset Autora, in seeing an old friend of hers reduced to the state of bondage she herself would soon be experiencing, and because he had wanted to take someone else along.

The constables waved him and the half-clad girl in the slave tunic he had brought on through without difficulty. “I don’t know what came over me,” Autora wept through her hands, as one of her free servants tried to comfort her. “I had never felt so hot and randy before. I had to fuck him. I was burning up inside.”

Alcaeus sat before her. The girl he had brought knelt beside him, head down. The noble seemed surprised at times during their visit at how candid and forthcoming she was being. She described in detail—in painful, excruciatingly detailed detail—how she’d met Cresene Megeuce at a restaurant . . . how they had started drinking together . . . how attractive the man had started to seem . . . how hot in her pussy she became . . . how she had needed to suck his cock . . . how she had needed to have him fuck her . . . how they had at last gone into the park and gone at it like two animals in heat.

She really seemed surprised she said all this to a perfect stranger.

“Thank you, Lady Autora,” Alcaeus, getting up. “You won’t remember me being here.” Neither would the constables outside nor the male servants of the household.

Alcaeus took a private coach home. As soon as they were underway, the man-wizard cast a spell that would prevent the driver atop the coach from eavesdropping on their conversation. He likely wouldn’t have been able to anyway, what with the traffic noise; but it was best to be sure.

Though they were alone in the cab, the wizard in the guise of a slave girl made sure her own gender would be equally ignorant of the exchange, just as she had made Autora forget and be so cooperative.

“Well?” Alcaeus asked, when she was finished.

“You were right,” Racy said, kneeling at Alcaeus’ feet. “Autora was under an enchantment. She was given multiple small doses of our Pecthentnim slave paste.”

Alcaeus didn’t trust the word of the Nycclethnim; but unlike the rest of his wizard guild he had an option in regard to a second opinion. He was the only man-wizard in De to know the Pecthentnim were also represented in his city, here in the person of Racy. In just about every quality of personality, the Pecthent wizard-slut was the opposite of her far more numerous Nyccleth peers. Where they were heavy-handed and domineering, she was tolerant and submissive. Where they were malevolent and cruel, she was kind and giddy. “Ooh! do you mind if I take off my tunic? I’m hot.” Without waiting for a reply or Alcaeus’ permission, Racy peeled off the brief slave rag she had been wearing. A little too giddy, in his opinion: Racy sometimes gave Alcaeus the impression that she was out of her mind.

“Your slave paste?”

“Yes.” She climbed up onto the seat beside him. She opened the blind of her window and stared out, her demeanor and the expression on her face exactly that of a puppy. Afraid that she would be seen, Alcaeus reached over and sharply pulled the shade back. Contritely, Racy looked down and put her thighs together, folding her hands over them. If not for her lack of clothing, her posture would have given her the impression of being an innocent little coquette.

As it was, she was keeping her hands to herself only with difficulty, it was apparent. “Do you think we could stop for ice cream?” she asked, eagerly.

“No,” Alcaeus said, and she pouted. “Why do you think Rilessa lied?”

“I don’t think she did,” Racy said. “Autora was given very small doses over a long period of time, so the enchantment would be a very hard one to detect by a non-Pecthent.”

Slave paste was the magical substance the Pecthentnim wizards created and then gave to the Lords of Daox to make slave girls. Women who ate the paste became even more femininely soft; their boobs grew to the size of sports balls; their body hair disappeared forever; their lips and vaginas became sex toys; and, above all else, their hourglass bodies heated up into a state of almost perpetual arousal.

His slave, Leusa, was a Daoxechent slave girl. Racy herself, at the moment, looked like a Daoxechent girl, too, though hers was an impermanent state.

“Wouldn’t Autora have been able to tell she was being dosed?”

“Not if the dosages were small enough. Slave paste is tasteless, so adding some to her food would have been unnoticeable. Her only symptoms would have been increasingly erotic dreams and daydream fantasies, increasing in frequency until she lost control, which she did.” The wizard tilted her head back, opened her mouth, and touched the tip of her tongue to her upper lip. She looked like she had been trying to lick her own nose. Giving up on that, she added, “A few months ago one of our enslavers was found dead on the lakeshore. His throat had been slit.” The wizard acted scatterbrained—whether she truly was or wasn’t, Alcaeus hadn’t quite decided yet. “At the time, we thought it was just a mugging. However, it’s possible he might have sold some slave paste to someone and been murdered for it.”

Alcaeus turned his face to his blinded window. “So. Leusa was right,” he said thoughtfully. Racy reached out and gently took one of Alcaeus’ hands. She pressed it to her closed thighs.

“If Autora’s convicted, will you still make her a slave girl?”

“Sure,” Racy said, turning back to him. The wizard’s brilliant grin had returned. “Why not?”

“Why not indeed?” Alcaeus managed to disentangle himself from her, and they rode the rest of the way back to his house in silence.

In addition to what she had had to say about a murdered Daoxechent and possible missing slave paste, before they parted the Woman-Wizard Racy told Alcaeus that since the passing of the amendment that now permitted the enslavement of nobles in De, set by the precedent established by Lady Eria Scarphn, seven other Deinian noblewomen had secretly volunteered themselves to the Lords of Daox for slavery.

The man-wizard had been shocked.

These women weren’t caught breaking any laws, Racy had told him. They had just needed to be fucked as slaves. Unlike Leusa, who had submitted herself prior to this law and so had had to go through hurdles to get herself owned, these women had just signed a paper and reduced themselves to permanent bondage. Each of them had claimed she could no longer stand being free: every instinct in them, so they had claimed, had told them they were slaves already.

“I had no contact with them,” Racy said to Alcaeus in the coach. “So I can’t say whether they too had been dosed with slave paste. But it was a striking statistical anomaly.”

Then, having made this statement, the wizard had gone out for ice cream.

Eight women, then, Alcaeus thought, peering over Leusa’s shoulder as she worked. He had given her the seven names, and she was reading over the complex charts of the noble families of De, a subject for which he had no talent but Leusa had grown up with, drawing connections and tracing familial heirs.

Eight noblewomen made slaves within the last few weeks. At first glance, such a small figure would hardly seem to matter at all.

The Island-Republic of De was plagued by nobility. The problems they caused weren’t so much the abuse some made of their wealth and privileges, although that was certainly an issue. It was just that there were so damn many of them. One in five Deinians countrywide was noble. Nearly two in five in the City of De were of the blood. They were encouraged to overbreed, to have as many children as possible. The reason was wholly political. In theory, the rules of the Deinian Senate were simple: every lord and lady had an equal say in the running of the republic. All well and good, if one was noble. However, under the law, every noble family had to have a Head of House, a leader, the determination of which was guided by a complicated system of primogeniture and social maneuvering. Although these Heads of Houses, technically speaking, themselves each had only one vote, being nobles, a perk of their position gave the Heads proxy rights to all their relatives’ votes, in cases of emergency, which they could cast en masse for the good of the state, outside of debate and regardless of their relatives’ individual choices.

In the past, this privilege had been used but rarely. In contemporary times, the definition of what constituted an “emergency” had been so devalued that, for all practical purposes, everything now was, and the Deinian Senate was dominated by these Heads of Houses, who voted their proxies on every matter brought before them.

Alcaeus abruptly lifted his head. “Leusa,” he said.

“Yes, master?” She stopped drawing lines and looked up at him. Seeing his expression, she quickly knelt at his feet.

“I can’t prevent Autora from being enslaved,” he said.

Leusa put her face down. “I understand, master,” she said quietly. There was neither approval nor disapproval in her tone, only slavish devotion.

“I can’t present the evidence Racy gave me,” the wizard went on. “If I did, she would be slain as a foreign wizard.” Or worse, he added mentally, given over to the Nycclethnim. “Her testimony would be valueless, anyway. Deinian courts only recognize evidence gathered by its licensed agents, and at best here Racy would be seen only as a slave girl.” Translation: her words would be valueless.

“I understand, master. Please forgive Leusa if she gave the impression she wanted this thing from her master.” She went to all fours and kissed Alcaeus’ feet. He bent down and lifted her up, kissed her.

There was nothing more to be said.

A little while later, Leusa looked up again from her charts. “Are these all the names you have, master?” she asked, an odd note in her voice.

“Yes. Why?”

She turned back to the charts, where she had drawn several complex-looking lines between columns of names. “Because if Autora and those seven other women were eliminated . . . I mean, deceased or enslaved, and a few others, too, both male and female . . . then that would change successions.”

Alcaeus stared at the chart. He had thought magical formulae were hard. This was a mess of lines and names, incomprehensibly associated. “What do you mean?”

“Heads of Houses,” Leusa said. “The elimination of these women could change the succession of their family lines. Not necessarily the wealthiest, just where offspring join together a few key families.”

She pointed out one. “Take Mido Laede here. He has no money, but his parents come from two distant lines of the Laede and Aegamoi families, separated for generations. With Autora enslaved, any child Mido had would become Head of House of the Aegamoi.”

She paused, thinking. “And if Mido were eliminated, then Head of House would fall to . . to . . .” She traced a line to some terminus. “Cira Laede,” she said at last, “who is now married into the Demas family. Her children would inherit control of all three lines.”

And hundreds of votes, Alcaeus realized.

He studied the charts.

“These changes,” he said, after a time examining their information and trying to understand, “some of them wouldn’t take place for generations.”

“Yes, master.”

“Who benefits the most? I mean, if taken to their conclusion, with the other names you think would help, which Head of House would receive the most voting power?”

Leusa sighed, looking over the enormous records. “That will take some time, master.”

He told her to take it. As she bent over her charts, Alcaeus stepped out to get more information. He came back later with the names of other nobles, male and female alike, some recently deceased, of natural causes or otherwise; some recently enslaved; even some, disturbingly, just vanished. Mido was one of the latter, as it turned out.

Because it was so important to the running of the state, De’s prefects kept detailed records of the myriad lineages. The information was all there: all someone had to do was ask the right questions.

Leusa worked through the night. Near dawn she looked up at her master and said, “The Aias family, master. Within two generations, their Head of House will control a third of the senate.”

“Lady Hierite,” Alcaeus said. “Old, political, and a traditionalist.”

Even for a wizard, getting an appointment to see Hierite proved difficult. The fact that he had to make an appointment in the first place spoke volumes: usually, in De, Alcaeus could go anywhere he wanted, anytime he wanted.

It took nearly a week.

Though she wasn’t the Head of House of the Aias, Hierite lived in the fortress her family maintained near the heart of the city. And a fortress it was. Castles had long since passed out of favor among the island-republics. Instead, the Aias lived in a compound of four mansions with a centralized courtyard and gated walls connecting the corners into one large, sprawling complex, in turn surrounded by another wicked-looking, spiked-iron fence. It was its own town within the greater city. There were many guards, both walking and stationary. There was also, as Alcaeus sensed in his approach, significant magical defenses. He saw a hulking troll, rare within city limits, standing unobtrusively beneath a dark overhang, and there was a nasty disemboweling spell cast over the supposedly “weak points” in the outer fence, which would tear the guts out of any male trespassers looking to break in that way.

Both magical implements were courtesy of Alcaeus’ own wizard order, the Ainchonnim, he noted. The Aias were not without connections, it seemed.

The wizard was escorted in and eventually taken to an old woman sitting primly in an old chair, in an out-of-the-way and plainly furnished room. He could sense the magical protective wards surrounding her. One was Ainchon. Another he recognized as Nyccleth. The third he didn’t recognize at all.

The chair was black wood, high in the back, severe-looking. It had no armrests; the seat was narrow and without cushion; it did not look at all comfortable. The woman was bloodless pale; nonetheless, she was dressed in matching black. Similarly, she sat without the slightest inch of give in her posture. She did not smile nor from her general expression did it appear that she had for a long time. Her arms were at her sides, elbows turned inward, palms pressed flat on top of the other on her lap, unmoving.

She was thin and utterly lacking in the figure of youth. She did not look at all like a comforting person. If what Alcaeus suspected about her was true, then she was definitely not.

There was a table with a wine bottle and glasses between them. “Would you care for something to drink, Wizard Alcaeus?” Her voice was as dry as her person.

Instead of answering, Alcaeus handed her the list of names he had acquired. Lady Hierite was not a wizard—there was no sense of the psychic about her. Nonetheless, the room they were in was magically sealed: no clairvoyant image, of either male or female variety, would pass beyond its confines.

She took the proffered list and glanced at it. “What an interesting set of names,” the old woman said. “Nothing obvious to connect them together, save their nobility, yet arranged as if the whole meant something.” She let the paper drop to the table. “I might suggest some additions.”

Without hesitation, then, she named three additional noblemen and women, which together with the rest brought the number of deaths, disappearances, and enslavements up to seventeen.

Hierite’s expression was unreadable.

“I know what you did,” Alcaeus said.

“You think you know what I did,” she responded, without batting an eyelash. She had none actually. Either her advanced age or some fashion had removed them. “I daresay your presence can be taken as an accusation. However, before you say words you might regret, may I speak to you first, plainly?”

Alcaeus said nothing, merely bent his head in her direction. He still felt like he was in control.

“If it is your belief that one individual is responsible for the deaths or enslavements of these persons, an insignificant trifling, I would remind you, from the thousands of impoverished nobles infesting this cesspool of a city, I want you to consider first whether that person would be so unwise as to not arrange that some of those disappearances would be of profit to your wizard order, the Ainchonnim. A personal vendetta, for instance, held against one family whose association with the Nycclethnim might otherwise have prevented a direct assault.”

Alcaeus kept his face still. There were many families in De with ties to one or the other of the two wizard guilds. Despite that, he hadn’t considered the involvement of wizardly politics in the matter.

“Consider, too, the idea that some of these disappearances would be of equal benefit to your order’s treaty-sister, the Nycclethnim. If true, neither might see advantage to your bringing a culprit to justice.”

Hierite took a sip of wine.

“Taking your presence here as an accusation, I would remind you that these disappearances are of no benefit to me whatsoever. In fact, they benefit only a Head of House who has yet to be born.” She put the glass down again. “If I had arranged for all these assassinations, though, within such a short period of time, it might be seen as giving an advantage to my House, it might be been seen as being prompted by a fear of my imminent demise, it might be seen as a result of a change in the law allowing for noble enslavements.” She had emphasized each ‘might.’ “Such an argument, on the surface, sounds rather speculative to have to explain to a board of prefects without proof, though, wouldn’t you say, Wizard?

“I might be charged, perhaps. But I would never be convicted.”

“There will be retribution nonetheless.”

The old woman’s lips turned only slightly upwards at the corners. “You speak, perhaps, of some hypothetical vengeance handed down by the Lords of Daox in response to the murder of one of their enslavers,” Hierite said. “Again, I ask you to consider, Wizard Alcaeus: such a murder necessitates motive based on the fact that this enslaver was a thief from his brothers, a fact which might have some mitigating factor in their desire for revenge.”

She shook her head. “No. I hardly think the Daoxechents or their wizard whore here in De have designs on my old, dry, cold cunt.”

This time even Alcaeus’ training could not prevent some slip in his expression. She caught it, too.

“No,” she said. “I did not use magic. Merely logic. Of course there is a Pecthent wizard here in the city. How could there not be, with your girl Leusa, the former noble Ioles? And how could you not be in contact with this highly illegal wizard, having come here with these names on your list? You might, even, if you are of a suspicious mind, consider that you have been allowed here solely so that you could explain my possession of this knowledge to the Pecthentnim and the Lords of Daox, to warn them.”

It was a trap. She played me, Alcaeus thought. I walked into it. He would have to speak to Racy now, if only to prevent her or the Daoxechents from moving on Hierite, assuming they would want to.

The old woman would have arranged for the dissemination of this knowledge to either or both the Nycclethnim and the Ainchonnim in the event of her own disappearance. It wasn’t Racy’s safety he had to consider, either. It was himself, for collaborating with her. And through him, his beloved Leusa. By coming here, he had put them all in danger.

“No. I would not, if I were you, make a public accusation against me. I admit nothing, after all. And aside from all that I’ve said, there is the lack of proof. If I were the overseer for these assassinations, I would certainly have ensured by now that the persons who carried them out are dead. Where wizards can read the minds of assassins, it is best those assassins have no minds.”

Now she did smile, definitely.

“This hypothetical overseer’s prior experiences in this sort of thing would have taught her how to avoid culpable responsibility, after all. Experiences which, in their sum, might make this paltry list of yours of seventeen appear quite, quite small.” She brushed the piece of paper aside with contempt.

“Are you sure you won’t partake of the wine, Wizard Alcaeus? It is of the very best vintage.”

A week later Autora was put on trial, the hearing of which in its entirety lasted little more than an hour. Crying, weeping, not truly understanding why this had happened to her, she was brought to the Circle of Shame outside the Prefecture of Justice, where she received her sentence. There was much booing and hissing from those in attendance, especially from the women among the spectators; and of them especially from the non-noble women, who saw in this spectacle just a small measure of evenness.

Alcaeus was also in attendance. He looked in vain for an appearance from Lady Hierite, though in truth he hadn’t really expected her.

Legally enslaved, missing only the enchantments that would forever bind her into servitude and bondage, the stripped Autora was subsequently marched back into the prefecture, to await her final disposition.

Alcaeus stayed in his seat as the crowd around him slowly jostled into motion, the spectators returning to their free lives. He sat, hand on his chin, thinking. Long after the crowd around him had dispersed, the man-wizard remained where he was, in quiet contemplation. Some of the constables started to approach, once, but they were warned off by others who recognized him. They left him alone.

Leusa had not come to the enslaving with him.

She would no doubt soon read about her friend’s enslavement in the paper, along with a requisite, insincere spiel about public morality and the higher expectations of the noble-blooded.

He would not be reading it himself.