Younos
Younos was worried. He had to arrange a sum of a hundred dinars, unless he wanted to smell like the sewer. The Sultana actually had thought he was a boy, although he was in his early twenties. It smarted. Such a ravishing woman, and she thought him a boy. Of course, his first thought when he thought of the Sultana was not ravishing. It was terrifying. Her personality was something else. It was as if she carried an enormous reserve power just beneath her surface, and if anyone got too comfortable, she would blast them to smithereens with that power.

Maybe he could allow himself to smell like the sewer for two weeks. His sister would complain, but he was sure she wouldn’t give him a hundred dinars. Then, there was the character reference. The Sultana’s personal scribe had been ordered to give Younos the details. He was supposed to get a person of repute in the city to vouch for his character. He did not know anyone of repute. 

He did not know where he’d get that character reference. Hypatia was a whore. If she vouched for his character, he suspected that she would be insulted in the Sultana’s court as well. Perhaps a soldier in the Sultana’s army with a secret to keep would be a good character reference? Almost as soon as he thought of it, he dismissed the idea. The Nubian would break his neck the moment he approached him with any idea of blackmail. He had suspected as much a while back, and had used Agathon as the bait to confirm this suspicion.

He could approach a customer of his sister’s. Someone with an unsullied reputation, who clandestinely asked for fetish favors from her. He was absolutely sure she wouldn’t tell him anything. Which meant he had to ferret this information out himself. 

Imi
Imi crawled out of the prince’s chambers. Her loins were sore, and her anus hurt. Her jaws had been overworked. Her entire nervous system had been excited beyond all comprehension many times in the night, and now she required rest. It almost seemed as if every single nerve and particle in her body was aching. It was a gentle ache, and one that made her fondly remember the night, but it was an ache nonetheless. She was both happy and exhausted. 

The prince was more of a devil than an angel when it came to carnal indulgences. The previous night had started with a simple session of cock sucking, that had descended into games of trying out different postures, and the prince teaching Imi how making love in different orifices in the human body felt.  

The prince had shown her how a large male member can be housed in a female mouth for extended periods of time. He had coached her on how male testicles must be treated in sex play. He had also initiated her into the pleasures of having a penis stuffed in the anus. There had also been plenty of regular lovemaking, with the prince fucking her vagina from different angles.

Now Imi knew two things. First, that she would rest all day, and perhaps the next day, but she would come back to give the prince more company. Second, that there must be a way in which a serving girl can marry a prince, no matter how much of a lecher he is. After all, his sheer good looks seemed to make up for any flaws in his character.

Rawer
Rawer gave the lips of her womanhood another loving kiss and felt her mouth the head of his penis. He smiled and continued loving the princess. Again they climaxed simultaneously, and his seed spilled all over her face, and her juices wet his face. It was their favorite shared experience, to lose themselves in the throes of mutual orgasm, forgetting the cruelties of a world that would attack them from all directions if their affair came out.

The crawl through the sewer had been worse than the princess had anticipated, but she had done it. Rawer had observed from a hidden vantage point for a good quarter hour before calling out to her and taking her on horseback to a secret lair which he had set up. Even Tuya wasn’t privy to the existence of this lair. 

He had gathered water in a bath near the lair, so that the princess could bathe and refresh herself. It wasn’t the same as bathing in a bath, as she was used to, but it was the best that he could arrange given the secretive nature of what they were doing. 

After the lovemaking session, he spoke to her about his plans to take her to be his wife to another country. The princess was both happy and dismayed. She was attached to her people and her family, and would lose all of that, for the sake of gaining his love. 

He told her the truth about him, and she was pleased. He was royalty just as she was, and she would live like a princess if she were to accompany him to the Kushite regions. They were powerful allies of the Sultana, and once she was adopted by them, even her mother could not do anything about her marriage. He told her all this.

She was happy beyond anything she had ever dreamed of. She told him this. She spoke to him of how her heart leapt, every time she thought that he was the only man she wanted, and how she was the only woman he wanted. 

Rawer’s eyes reflected something in addition to the joy she felt. It was subtle, but disturbing. He was conflicted. He never thought of relationships with women as exclusive. Sometimes he wanted to fuck a Mesopotamian woman, and sometimes a Nubian. Sometimes it was Egyptian and sometimes it was Hellenic.

He never considered this improper. Now the princess clearly wanted him to make love only to her, for the rest of eternity. He knew that wasn’t in him. He didn’t know what she would say when he broached this particular subject.

Right now he had seen her back to the mouth of the sewer and asked her to be alert and vigilant until she was safely back and had her bath. They also made plans for the next visit. 

He considered themselves lucky, because the Sultana was preoccupied with the snake sisters attacking the kingdom, apart from her usual workload as the people’s magistrate and multiple engagements. 

He didn’t know that hot, angry eyes had watched him kiss the princess. Hot eyes that were brimming over with jealousy, and would do anything to get between him and the princess. The eyes glared even now, as he sat in a pensive pose, a few feet from the mouth of the sewer, having just heard the last of Mediha’s steps receding in the distance. 

Sultana
The star-shaped section of the woods had been scouted. An entire section of the Sultana’s army had gone there, including the princess Lubna herself. She was the adventurous one, and once she knew of her mother’s plans, she had prevailed on her to accompany the party. 

There appeared to be nothing there of consequence. There were simply woods, and a peculiar star shape to them. The entire length between the woods and the Wadi had been scoured inch by inch, with many pairs of eyes scanning the region for signs of that secret something that they needed to survive the onslaught of the sisters. The general consensus was that this something was buried deep within the ground and that they would have to start digging the entire length between the woods and Wadi to uncover something. 

The Sultana was given this information and contemplated it. She was sitting with two of her nonagenarian ministers, the ones that had aged well and were wise and not cantankerous. They had wanted to reflect on it the earlier night and had met again to think about it. 

The section where the secret lay was approximately two miles long, and they were thinking through whether this was the most efficient way of dealing with the challenge. Were there any clues in the missives they had received from the army from their reconnaissance of the place?

Nothing appeared definitive. The Sultana read through them multiple times, as did her excellent ministers, and then they together reached the conclusion that the hidden messages of the sisters didn’t give them enough.

“Send for the Hellenic boy,” the Sultana said. “He may have missed something in giving us his information.”

Nadia
General Mohal stood up. The two slave girls shivered. They were bleeding from the whipping he had given them. The girls were in their twenties and were both native Mesopotamian beauties. Now their physical beauty was marred by the hours of abuse they had tolerated at the hands of the general. He slapped both of them in turn again and then turned to read a missive from a messenger. 

“Enjoy it when you can, slave,” he told her, “one day you can tell your grandchildren that the great emperor Mohal wanted you for his amusement. This is the most exalted night of your life.

One of the girls whimpered. The general’s beating had robbed her of all vitality. She swayed where she knelt and then fell to the floor in a faint. 

“Mesopotamian girls nowadays don’t have stamina,” he said. “Isn’t that right, my dear?”

The other girl was crying, but she nodded through her tears. She was called Nadia, and her hand clenched into a fist behind her back. 

Hypatia
His private request was to be slapped and abused, and spoken to like he was her sex slave. She got triple rate from him. Hypatia didn’t pass any moral judgment on the trader. If something is your fantasy, it is your fantasy. If you’re willing to give me lots of money for it, and all I have to do is yell, scream and abuse you willy-nilly, so be it. 

He controlled all the water systems in the city, and was paid a portion of the water taxes that were paid to the state. He was on the Sultana’s business council. He had been one of those instrumental in drafting the kingdom’s trade policies. He was renowned for his intelligence when it came to matters of trade. He had a veritable goddess for a wife who was known for her feminine charms and her torrid affairs. He was the ever forgiving husband who was respected in society.

Now Hypatia knew why he could afford to be ever forgiving. He had fantasies that she would never fulfill. He needed some outlet for them. Her reputation for being more discreet than a carcass in a charnel ground was serving her well. Of course, it was also true that the more secrets she learned, the more people would feel threatened by her. This worried her sometimes, but she worked her charms on them, and made sure they reached her whenever they sought her. 

People don’t appreciate what it takes to be a popular whore. It isn’t enough to know carnal secrets. One must also be a good scheduler, and sensitive to human emotions, and great with gentle haggling. Post-coital haggling worked great with some men, and foreplay haggling worked much better with others.

Whatever the case, the trader was having the time of his life. Hypatia slapped him for the fifth time in this session. With Suleiman, her sessions had gotten more and more dominant. Now he didn’t even approach her as the trading genius that he was. He called her mistress H or mistress or mistress Hypatia the moment he walked into her residence. He usually got onto his knees the moment he was indoors, and crawled to her. 

She was a master at role-playing, and turned nasty the moment he got on his knees. Today was no different. 

“Your slutty wife isn’t taking care of you, so you come crawling to me, you sewer rat,” she said in her usual charming way.

He whimpered. 

She slapped his cheek again. 

“Look up when I talk to you, Suleiman,” she said, “I am not a healer or a wise woman here. I am your mistress.”

He looked up, completely in his role as a slave. She slapped him again, and caught his hair and pressed his nose into her pubic bush. 

“You haven’t eaten yet have you, Suleiman?” she said, “my nether hair is a delicious meal for a disgusting creep like you. Do you like it?”

He nodded into her pussy. 

“Good, now lick me down there,” she said, rapping his head with her knuckles, “and do it like you mean it you worthless piece of shit.’

He licked her between the legs. 

It was a long session that day, and by the end of the session, she had treated him to a lot of his favorites. She slapped him enough times that his light brown cheeks were orange. She dragged him all around the room on his knees, with his nose between her buttocks. She made him lie down while she walked on him, and slapped every part of his body with her feet.

She spat on him many times, and told him how disgusting and vile he was, using synonyms and metaphors that would make a poet in the Sultana’s court jealous and embarrassed. She abused him, his position and his wife, according to previous arrangement. She sucked his cock and balls viciously, biting them, slapping them, pulling his ball sac until he yelped in pain. She sat on him for a while, while she tugged at his cock, and slapped him with her buttocks, screaming abuse at him all the while.

When he came two hours later, for the second time, he was one very satisfied trader, and he fell asleep, snoring. She smiled. Sleeping in her chambers during business hours meant it would cost extra. She left him and went back to her next chore, designing the next part of her partially built garden. 

A pair of curious and gleeful eyes had seen her entire session, and now thought about the proper angle with the trader. Writing one character reference shouldn’t take that much convincing. Oh, maybe a couple of hundred dinars shouldn’t be too much of a problem for such a trader either.

Serpents
Soldiers scurried in all directions. The attack had come at night, and they were taken unawares. It didn’t really matter though. Day or night, they were stilled decimated. This time all three sisters were attacking the eastern border post, and their attack was far more vicious than the earlier ones. 

They were chasing down men even when they ran several miles into the kingdom, and crushing them, decapitating them, swallowing them using the armies of snakes that framed their lovely yet terrifying heads. Again, no women were harmed.

Twenty woman soldiers who were working border security had attacked the sisters, but were firmly repulsed thrice, without any casualties. On their fourth attempt to attack, the sisters decapitated one among their number, presumably as a warning, and flung the rest of them half a mile interior. There were plenty of broken bones, but only that single casualty. 

These serpentine forces of destruction swept through the entire post in a mere half hour, having destroyed every last man in the post, and a few male civilians who were foolish enough to engage. 

The sisters were agitated, and soldiers had orders to note every color change they saw. This time, however, they had left no witnesses. Even the army scribes who didn’t engage had been crushed beyond recognition. 

The contingent of women soldiers noted some color changes, but memories that are gathered in the heat of battling a vastly superior force are not the most reliable. So what the sisters told one another almost stayed a secret. 

One young girl, perched high on a tree, had been observing everything in the battle close to her, and it was enough for her to record a number of their ocular communique. Besides, she had an excellent memory. She leaped down from the tree, now that the danger was past, and ran back home to tell her father what she had learned.