“Silent, do you have a minute?” Pencil Note asked innocently.

Sip felt a moment of despair before he remembered that he didn’t need to be that afraid of a little chat with the supervisor. He had actually approached a mare and gotten her to agree to a scene – only one mare so far, and not quite in the way Pencil Note had prescribed, but he didn’t have to reveal that. He could say without lying that he was making progress; hopefully Pencil wouldn’t inquire too deeply into precisely what progress and how much.

“Sure,” he replied, as casually as he could.

Pencil Note mumbled indistinctly to himself while he searched for something among the papers on his desk. “Oh, here it is. I’ve got an opening for a, hmm, special assignment on short notice, if you have time. There’ll be some intensive training over the next week or so – probably Sunday and Tuesday evenings – and then a performance on Friday or Saturday.”

Sip was reasonably sure he didn’t have any evening plans outside the Society coming up. But – of course – “I’ve got an appointment Tuesday night,” he said. “Sorry.”

“Well, they’re flexible. It could be earlier on Tuesday. Or even Wednesday. There could be a long-running role in it for you if it works out, too.”

Sure, he could manage that. He’d gotten Tuesday off from work already, on general principles. “Tell me more,” he said.

“There’s not much I can tell you; strictly need to know, which I don’t. But –” Pencil Note made a show of looking around to check they were alone in his office “– how would you like to be a quiet?”

“Oh. Sorry,” Sip said, clamping hooves to his muzzle. He hadn’t even been aware he was making a noise.

“No, not that way. I mean – you’ve heard of the Quiet, haven’t you?”

Sip slowly remembered bits and pieces – overheard half-whispered rumors about ghostly ponies who would appear out of nowhere and pick out a sub that they’d take away to an unknown fate. Worse than death, one small group of slaves awaiting sale had agreed in hushed voices. Those they take never come back, said others. Sip had never encountered the Quiet himself, but it was clear enough they were something to be scared of.

“You don’t mean . . . Them?” he said, unsure if he ought to play along or, on the other hoof, feign bravado.

“Yes, them,” confirmed Pencil Note. “The horrid sub-snatching bogeyponies. And now one of them has gotten himself hospitalized, and they need a replacement. What do you say?”

“But, you can’t just go and join . . . them, can you? I mean, they’re –”

“They’re not in the job listings, that’s for sure,” Pencil chuckled. “But they have to come from somewhere, won’t they? Anyway, based on my judgment of your reliability, the gig’s yours if you want it. Oh, and you need to promise not to tell anypony about what you’re doing.”

Sip’s mind was finally catching up with the conversation. He was already part of a hidden, secret society, and now a whole new layer of inner, deeper secrets were being dangled in front of him. He couldn’t possibly say no to that, no matter how much work it would take to be worthy.

“I’ll do it,” he said.

The Quiet met in an activity hall at the back of an area of blowing alleys and squirt courts behind the main cum dumps. Sip was met by the door by a pegasus wearing a plain black collar who had him swear to secrecy once again before she let him in. The pegasus, who said she was called Ashen and was a sub-leaning switch, had a mane in several shades of gray, which made Sip think she could probably do a pretty good Daring Do cosplay, except she was wearing a blue floral dress that Daring wouldn’t be seen dead in.

The other two ponies in the room were Star Spur, a robust fellow with a heavy Appleoosan accent, and a spry old unicorn who introduced himself only as ‘The Boatmare’.

“Not much of a mare, you think?” he continued impishly. “Perhaps not. But my predecessor’s predecessor was one, and she invented the role, so it sticks. It’s no good fighting it.”

Sip shook his hoof. “I’m Sip.”

“So, Sip,” said Star Spur, “what all d’ya know already ’bout what we do?”

“Um, not really anything,” said Sip, trying to find an intelligent response. “From what I’ve heard, you gobble up little foals and snatch ponies away so they’re never heard from again.”

“Ah, no, that’s the Headless Horse,” exclaimed Boatmare. “We should do a co-production someday.”

“Close enough.” Star chuckled. “At the bottom of it, The Quiet’s just another subnapping outfit. Doms hire us to round up their sub and carry her to them, give her a fancy start to their scene – like you might get some guards to do the Sudden Arrest or the Runaway Slave.”

Sip nodded. He remembered reading through a list of those scenarios, wondering if it would be worth it to use one of them for a session with George. There was a wide variety of options on offer from enterprising groups of doms, with names ranging from Debt Collection and The Job Interview to Ransom Seekers or Now You Take a Nap. “I don’t think I ever saw The Quiet in one of those lists, though,” he said.

“You wouldn’t, ’less you’re in one a the guilds down in Root we work with.”

Root meant the deepest layer of the dungeons, where particularly intense or risky kinks were practiced. It made sense that would be where the mysteriously spooky Quiet took the ponies they abducted – even though Sip was having trouble imagining that these ponies were worthy of the hushed voices and sideways glances he had witnessed.

“Um, I’m not actually allowed down in Root yet,” he said. Perhaps Pencil Note had made a mistake? “I’m only barely allowed here.” Nopony laughed.

“You won’t be going all the way down,” said Ashen matter-of-factly. “And I’ll get you a visitor permit for –”

“Sorry I’m late, guys,” came a voice from the door. It sounded familiar. “Had a client who just couldn’t get through her . . . why, isn’t that Sip!”

Beating Heart strode across the floor to Sip and caught him in a hug. He hugged back slightly awkwardly. She’d never done that when they worked together at the Hayburger.

“You’re here after all!” she said. “I thought I’d scared you away for good.”

“Ohoo,” the Boatmare cackled. “I sense a story coming up!”

Beating shrugged. “Not much to tell. Last year the outreach board tapped me to recruit this young upstanding pony into the Society. But he was just a coworker and . . . well, it didn’t go so good.”

“Now that we’re all here,” interrupted Ashen in a loud voice, standing by the door Beating had come in through, “the door is locked, and we can get to work. Break out the suits!”

The costumes Beating and Star pulled forth from a tarp-covered cart gave Sip a better understanding of the hushed voices he had heard ponies speak of the Quiet with. They were full-body suits with elaborate spiky breast plates and side trains, and wide face-concealing helmets. When Beating Heart had donned the full kit, Sip could easily see her not as the pony he knew, but instead a shadowy creature from the forbidden dimensions of despair.

Meanwhile Ashen and Star Spur were showing him how to wear his own identical costume. It turned out the mirrored outer surface of the helmet was easy enough to see out of; he had an excellent view of his surroundings once his eyes adapted. The rest of the suit was going to take some getting used to, though. He made a circuit around the room while Star put on a suit too.

“Gettin’ the hang of it yet?” asked Star when he came back. His voice sounded distant and muffled from inside the mirrored blob that was his head.

“A bit hard to walk in,” Sip answered. “I feel like I’m slipping all the time.”

Ashen nodded. “You need to practice. Keep the felt booties with you when you leave today, and wear them enough that you’re sure on your hooves by Friday. The key thing about the Quiet is that you make no sound. You don’t speak a word during the performance, and even your hoofsteps must not be heard.”

“It’s not that bad,” said Beating. “Most of the dungeon, the floors are not polished like this one.”

The Boatmare wore a different costume, a plain gray cowl that covered most of his body. Beating Heart, the lucky nag, got to take off her helmet so she could cast a piece of lighting magic on him that made his face disappear completely in shadows under the hood of the cowl.

“Don’t you have a costume, Ashen?” asked Sip.

She shook her head. “Today I’m standing in for your victim. During the performance I’ll be supervising out of costume.”

“What she’s saying is she’s our manager,” explained Beating. “She handles the bookings too.”

“Indeed,” said Ashen. “Our next appointment is for Friday evening. We expect to find the victim in tall-cage block five of the slave market. If she doesn’t show, we’ll try again Saturday.”

“What, would she just stand you up?” Sip asked. “Us, I mean. And the dom we’re taking her to.”

Ashen and Beating looked at each other, frowning.

“Ain’t like that, really,” said Star, “but we only ever do blind jobs. The mare we take put herself down for bein’ snatched by somepony sometime in a certain stretch a days. She can’t know just when it happens, or that it’ll be the Quiet. So we can’t precisely tell her to be sure to be in on Friday.”

Ashen raised her voice a bit to grab control of the conversation back. “On the day itself, while you suit up I’m going to scout out exactly where to find your victim, and then tell you before you come out in public. Or, as may be, cancel and postpone.”

“Can’t have the Quiet appear and then not snatch up anypony,” cackled the Boatmare.

“So let’s do a dry run,” continued Ashen. “Star on the left, Beating on the right – helmet back on, please. Silent, you’re in the middle because it’s your first show. Try to keep pace with the two others. Line up and go!” She produced a whistle from princess-knew-where and gave a short sharp peep.

They went in big angular figure-eights around the hall for some time to give Sip a chance to practice walking in formation. Ashen provided a running narration from the sides:

“As you’re walking down the main street, you notice how ponies are moving out of the way, avoiding you, keeping a respectful distance. A few ponies gawp, others avert their eyes. Once or twice somepony will discover you only after wondering why the pony they’re talking to has suddenly gone mute; then she turns around and notices you with a startled jump that she does her best to dampen, anything to not attract the attention of The Quiet. Nopony knows where you might be looking, mirrored helmets hiding your gaze perfectly. For all the onlookers know, you might be robots, marching straight towards an unknown destination with no waver, no sound, no mercy. A force of nature.

“Now you’re passing through the arched gateway to the slave market. Little by little the manifold sounds of the trade floor respectfully fade to a hushed murmur as traders, slaves, and customers alike notice who are making their way through the normally bustling space. Them! It is whispered fearfully among the slaves in their cages, those of their comrades who have been lucky enough never to encounter the mute menace quickly being brought up to speed. Even the most boisterous of the masked doms plying the floor feel the change in mood, shutting up for a few moments while the ominous procession passes –”

Sip had enough to do with walking in his costume and at the same time stay exactly halfway between the two others so they’d look smart and rehearsed rounding the corners. But even so, Ashen’s description got through to him, making him imagine himself as a minor antagonist from a Daring Do book. He half expected Ahuizotl himself to leap out from behind a pillar and declare that his latest plan was now unstoppable.

. . . a pillar? There were no pillars here, only a big empty hall and colorful lines on the hardwood floor marking it up as a combination indoor buckball, stiffley, or whinnyball court. Except, in his mind it had been the slave pits. He could swear he had smelled the torches.

“– a bit slower after you turned off from the main aisle into a narrow alley between the cages. But you never stop to navigate; you know exactly where you’re going. Shivering subs press themselves against the backsides of the cages you pass, hoping dearly they are not who you’re coming for. You pass them by, not even deigning to recognize their presence – until, suddenly, with perfect coordination, you turn and line up in front of one particular cage. Hey, Boatmare, come help me set up the dummy cage.”

As the debutant, Sip would get the honor of giving a red ceremonial gag to the victim, who would then put it on herself in a gesture of submission. Then Sip and Star would move in on each side of her and tie long lead lines to cords dangling from the gag. Beating, being a unicorn, was not as dexterous with her hooves, and couldn’t do magic in her costume without lighting up her entire helmet from inside.

“Lemme show ya the best way to tie it with yer hooves.” Star came over to Sip’s side of Ashen after tying his own lead. “Goes like this; it’s called a weaver’s knot.”

Star untied his example and Sip tried to do it the same way he had. It seemed to be easy enough.

“Right in one! Yer a natural, son.”

“I’m not a complete yearling,” said Sip – perhaps a bit too testily, since Ashen gave a jerk and shot Sip a sharp glance. But she quickly went back to staring straight ahead, playing the meek victim.

“Of course he is,” laughed Beating Heart. “When we take off the suits, look at his cutie mark. It’s the same knot!”

Sip had never given much thought to his cutie mark. It had been there one morning, without the great epiphany some of his friends were talking about. His teachers and parents said sometimes it takes some time for a pony to figure out what their mark means, and he had accepted that – at least nopony had thought to connect the knot to tying up ponies, which had recently begun to occupy his mind. But now that Beating mentioned it, the knot Star Spur had shown him was unmistakably the same one that had been displayed on his flank for years. Curious coincidence.

Out loud he said, “I’m not sure I can do it if the mare doesn’t stand as still as Ashen does, though. What if she doesn’t cooperate?”

“Don’t worry about that,” said the Boatmare. “You’re the Quiet; she won’t dare.”

“Why not? What happens if she doesn’t?”

“Nopony knows,” said Ashen, spitting out the gag she had been wearing while pretending to be their victim. “That’s what makes it so powerful. Everypony knows you don’t want to know what happens if you cross the Quiet. So our only real weapon is fear itself – well, fear and surprise –”

“And nice red uniforms,” interjected the Boatmare.

Ashen ignored him. “But it works extremely well, because of that.”

Sip was still confused. “But – I mean, she knows it’s the Clocktower, right? Nothing really bad can happen to her.” Not even in Root. Or could it? “Suppose she wants to show everypony she’s not afraid?”

Star Spur held up a hoof to stop Ashen’s reply. “The short of the long, Sip, is she’d be a durn big spoilsport if she pulled that. You never saw one of our shows, but they ain’t just for the gal we take: it’s the whole room followin’ along and gettin’ their scare on. There’s safewords, of course, but she’d ruin it for ever’pony else if she up and resists in character.”

“The welcome classes for subs even use us as a standard example,” said Beating. “How not to be a killjoy when you come across public play.”

“I guess,” said Sip, not fully convinced. “But what do we actually do if, say, she makes a run for it anyway? It’s not like I know any fighting tricks.”

Ashen sighed. “If that happens, I suppose you can give chase, see if she’s willing to let you catch up and trip her. If she isn’t, just call towertop and we all go home.”

“Towertop? We can do that?”

The other ponies looked at each other. Beating Heart recovered first. “Anypony can safeword, Sip. Didn’t they tell you that? Think of what Towertop means.”

“Stop, drop, unknot, comfort,” quoted Sip from his introduction course.

“Yes, but more generally it means that the scene has borked so badly that it needs to stop right now. It doesn’t matter who figures that out first. And that’s all we can do if we get a sub who won’t cooperate. No way to continue that and keep up the mystique for everypony else.”

Sip nodded. It made sense; he just hadn’t thought of it that way.

Then there was more marching, now with Beating leading the way and Ashen boxed in between Sip and Star behind her. Ashen had put the gag back on and couldn’t narrate the journey, so the hall stayed a plain old gym. Later, a section of the floor was declared to be a boat taking them across a subterranean lake, the Boatmare standing at one end of it and pretending to steer. Sip was promised he would get to see the real locations during the next practice, walking the entire route out of costume.

“I don’t think we can really practice the island part up here,” said Beating after they had alighted from the ‘boat’ and the Boatmare simulated gliding away with it to the other side of the room.

Ashen shrugged, reaching up and taking off the gag. “No, that has to wait. But, in broad strokes, what happens is you stay here on the quay until the boat is out of sight. Then it’s a short walk to the dome in the center of the island, where there’s a shaft going straight down to the reception chamber at the Root level. We strap the victim’s hooves to a four-point suspension frame and hoist her down the well; then the requisitioner takes over at the bottom. She wants to do most of the scene with the sub still hanging from the frame, so we agreed she will get somepony to winch it back up afterwards.”

“Upside down?” asked the Boatmare. “Kinky!”

“Kink’s my middle name, you know. We try to be flexible, within the bounds of the core story. Okay, let’s run through the part before the island once again.”

“Out of costume,” Star suggested. “Right?”

Ashen rolled her eyes. “If you must.”

Star and Beating immediately began popping off their helmets. Sip followed their example.

“You’re gonna overheat if you wear these suits for more than half an hour,” Beating explained. “What do you think about them, Sip?”

“Well, they’re cool, I guess. Though, with the way they cover your face and everything, it basically makes us mooks, doesn’t it? It’s like what ought to happen is that some passing hero jumps at us out of the shadows, and we end up tied up in a dumpster while they pretend to be us.”

“You think?” said Ashen sharply. “The stolen-uniform ploy is one of those things that sound brilliant on paper, but if you actually try to pull it off it never works. There’s always some little detail or procedure you’re not aware of, and nine times out of ten it turns out the uniform you’ve stolen is for a sergeant and they expect you to give orders, which is not the kind of advantage you’d think it is. And don’t even get me started on how you find a mook to mug who wears the right size . . . Clearly somepony here has read too many bad adventure novels.”

Sip made a mental note never to try to discuss Daring Do with Ashen.

The livery stable was not part of the slave market, but was located a short walk along the main dungeon street, near the submissives’ locker complex. Like Honest Bram’s, it was a place for subs and doms to meet and start a planned scene while already in character. But here the waiting slaves were not for sale; instead the pretense was that their masters had put them up for board until they had need of them again. The back half of the building housed a boarding kennel that the pet-playing members used for the same purpose.

When Tuesday came, Sip didn’t go there to pick up George right at seven o’clock. He had read some of the leaflets about the place, and it looked like waiting for the absent masters, locked into boxes or cages, was a large part of the experience it offered. It made sense. He could understand that. And he didn’t want to make her miss that part of it.

But understanding something is not the same as feeling it. He kept feeling like he was standing her up, imagining that the wait would make her so disappointed that she gave up and safeworded out. This didn’t make sense, he knew that, but he couldn’t help thinking it.

He lasted little more than half an hour; then he couldn’t bear it anymore and went in to look for her.

George was standing in a narrow tie stall near the back end of the stable, wearing a blindfold and a gag bridle. Sip felt a small sting of regret that he hadn’t been the one to put them on her – or at least the one to decide she would wear them – but he told himself that was silly. He knew what it was like to be the volunteer preparing a mare to be picked up by somepony else; what counted was that Sip was the pony she wore them for.

He put his head slowly up towards hers. “Hello George,” he purred. “Did you miss me?”

Her ears sprang up, and she spread out her wings involuntarily, only for them to hit the sides of the stall. She nodded eagerly, as much as she could with her reins tied to a knob on the stall door.

He might as well let her keep the toys on. “Test your bell,” he ordered. She would have done that already, of course, but it was still good form to hear the bell yourself when taking over a gagged sub.

Ding.

He took her reins and led her slowly out of the stable, towards the training room he had booked.

The Quiet training had taken so much of Sip’s time that he hadn’t come up with a real program for today, only some scattered ideas that he wouldn’t dignify by calling them a plan. But he did remember that the first thing she had said in aftercare the last time was that practicing slave positions had been fun. Still, he couldn’t quite shake off the worry that she would find it uninspired to do more of the same – but if he wanted to do right by her, he first had to train her to be honest with him about what she liked and what she didn’t. What better way to do that than by giving her what she said she liked? Besides, she’d been right: it was fun.

He did shake it up a bit by making her keep the blindfold on during the training session. She didn’t need her eyes anyway, as long as he stuck to open-floor positions rather than the ones that required a wall or furniture. The gag had to come off, though, so she could ask questions in response to his instructions, and say, “Yes, master!” when he gave orders. He had missed her voice – meek and apprehensive, sometimes cracking a little, but also somehow sounding of steely calm determination to obey him.

Since she couldn’t see him, he tried to make up for that with touches while she held the positions. Gropes, it would be called outside the Society, but here it was his right and duty. He stayed mostly away from her mare parts, saving them for later – other than a few blatant, probing squeezes at the beginning to make it clear he could – and concentrated on caressing her legs, her sides, her neck, running his hooves through her mane, stroking her wings . . .

Her wings! He was less afraid of damaging them after he had read up a bit (of course the Society’s library contained a helpful pamphlet entitled An Earth Pony’s Field Guide to the Pegasus Body), and they were a whole new world to him. Several times he commanded her to spread them out just so he could bury his face in the feathers. They smelled like nothing else – was she using some kind of perfume in them?

She reacted to his touches with twitches and shivers and little content moans that she did her best to suppress. He toyed briefly with the idea of ordering her not to hold back on them, but her attempts sounded so cute that he let her.

It was time for the next step of his sort-of-plan. He ordered George into ‘display’ position, standing up on all fours with her tail swished aside to expose her behind, while he went to the toys drawer to get a few implements.

She gave a startled yelp when he put the anal plug up against her upper hole. He kept it there for several moments, to give her time to bow out if he was going too fast, but she said nothing more and just stood there, breathing quickly.

“Relax,” he said, resting a hoof calmingly on her croup. “That’s an order, by the way. I can’t do this if you scrunch it up.”

She nodded slowly and shifted her hind legs a fraction of a hoof further apart. He began pushing the plug in, hoping he had gotten enough lube on it. He had tried this before, on some of the mares at Honest Bram’s, but they had been used to the plugs – perhaps a newbie like George needed more. But it slid in easily enough, the flared base stopping up against her ponut with an audible bump.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, letting go of the breath she had been holding while he pushed. “Uh. Ah.” She wiggled her butt up and down, making small very careful steps in place to get a feel for the foreign object inside her.

Sip was ready with a lubed-up dildo for her main hole, but decided then and there it would wait for another day. The plug would be enough at first; there had to be room to escalate later, now that he was somewhat sure there would probably be a next time.

“Lift your left hind and hold it up towards me,” he ordered. She complied slowly, and he set to putting one of the felt booties he had borrowed from the Quiet on her. He had spent most of Monday walking around the Clocktower in those booties himself, and eventually thought he had the hang of them – but also thought it would be an interesting device for a sub to be forced to wear. George would be going for a little walk now.

When he had the booties on all four of her hooves, he led her outside the training room, into the street, and finally took off her blindfold. “Do you recognize where we are?” he asked.

“I . . . I think so,” she said, looking around and blinking against the light.

“Good. Now I want you to go up to the lost-and-found desk at Two Fountains Plaza and ask the staffer there to tell you which color the butt plug you’re wearing is. Then come back here and knock on the door. Think you can do that?”

She looked uncertainly between him and the street leading up to the plaza in the distance, blushing slightly. At last she sighed and lowered her head. “Yes, master.”

He watched her walk away unsteadily, trying to keep her balance in the booties at the same time as not making any big movements with her thighs that would disturb the plug. He wanted to go with her, to support and steady her, but it wasn’t what she needed now.

“It’s orange,” she said, barging into the training room after coming back from the plaza.

Sip turned around and raised his eyebrows at her. He probably ought to teach her a lesson about knocking (not something he was too good at himself, but he wasn’t playing a slave) and how to approach her master respectfully. But it would be another day; he had bigger turnips to slice now. “Is that what the lost-and-found pony said?”

“Yes.” She nodded.

“Describe this pony to me.”

“Uh.” She began looking uncomfortable. “I’m not sure. It was a unicorn, I think. A stallion. With a . . . sort of yellowish coat, perhaps?”

This was a passable description of the pony who had been at the desk earlier, whom Sip knew from volunteering with him in the slave market a few weeks ago. He had had a chat with him while he was waiting to pick up George from the livery stable.

“That’s strange,” he said. “The plug is orange alright, but I agreed with that pony that he would tell you it’s black.” He looked her up and down with his best not-angry-but-disappointed expression.

She closed her eyes and swallowed, ears folded all the way back.

He waited.

“I went into the bathroom halfway up and looked in the mirror,” she whispered at last.

He wanted to hug her – but, again, that wasn’t what she needed. “Do you remember I told you to ask at the desk?” he said mildly.

She nodded despondently.

“Why didn’t you?”

She was silent for a long time again. Eventually she said, in a small voice, “I’m sorry, master.”

Sip sighed loudly. “Lie down on the bench over there, belly up.”

George walked slowly to the padded bench at the back of the room Sip was pointing to, and climbed up on it.

He started taking the booties off her. “Obedience is the fundament of everything,” he explained while he worked. “If I cannot trust that you will do what I say, where would we be?” He had imagined giving this wonderfully snooty lecture the next time he’d have to discipline her, but now that he was doing it, it sounded weak and trite to him. He went on all the same. “I’d have to keep you in a cage and only use you through the bars.”

She made a little wordless whimper that he couldn’t quite interpret. When he looked over at her head she was staring blankly at the ceiling.

Fortunately he was done with the booties now. He let her keep the plug. “Now splay out your legs like in ‘surrender’. Left forehoof down and start grinding your marehood. Tell me when you’re about to come.”

She shot him a surprised glance but did as he said.

He stood behind her and stroked her mane and ears gently while she worked, sharing her perspective. After some time he took to blowing softly at her ears.

“Don’t mind me,” he whispered teasingly. “Just pretend you’re home.”

“Per- . . . permission to use two hooves, master?”

“Granted.”

She moved her other forehoof down and began massaging with that too. He couldn’t see exactly what she was doing; it looked like she was taking it to her teats. He kept licking the ear he had whispered into, stroking the other side of her head with a hoof.

“Getting there,” she suddenly said.

He stood back up. “Stop. Forelegs back up. Lie still.”

She stretched her forelegs out to the sides, and looked at him quizzically for a short moment before he unfolded a big cloth napkin and threw it over her head, covering her face.

Then he waited.

It took several minutes before she spoke up beneath the cover. “Are you there? Master?”

“I am here,” Sip confirmed with careful indifference. He had drifted over to study the toys hanging on the side wall while he waited, and didn’t turn around to speak towards her.

“What happens now?” she asked hesitantly. “Please, master, I was so close to –”

“You’re being punished for your disobedience.” He sighed and finally turned around, walking over towards her. “Perhaps you would prefer a quicker sort of punishment?”

“Yes. Please.”

“You’ll have to beg for that, you know,” he explained mildly. “What do you think I should do with you, George?”

“I . . . you could spank me with the cane again?” she suggested.

He nodded sagely, though she couldn’t see him. “How many strokes do you deserve?”

“I don’t know. Three?” she ventured. “No – four? Four!”

He set off briskly towards the toy wall. “Raise your hinds up towards the ceiling,” he called out behind him. When he came back with the cane, she had her legs in the air, swaying slightly. “Beg me for your punishment.”

She emitted a strangled little sob while she collected her thoughts. “Master . . . please punish this worthless slave for her insolence. Make her know her place, make her feel what it means to cross you. Make it hurt and hurt, and make her cry and shake and regret she even thought of being disobedient . . . please, master . . . make me good again.”

She gave a start, tensing up all over as he rested the cane gently but firmly against her buttocks. “Tell me when,” he said.

She took a deep breath. “Now.”

He pulled the cane back and swung at her with a whack! All her legs twitched at once when he connected, and he could hear her fight against crying out. After a few seconds she resumed breathing. “One,” she gasped.

“Keep still, slave,” he said patiently, putting the cane up against her once more. “Again.”

“Now.” Whack! “Hnngg. . . uh, two?”

“Good.” The twitch had been a little smaller this time. That was enough to allow her a small boon. “For the last two strokes, you may scream.” He had not ordered her to keep it in so far, but she had done that anyway, a rule of her own. By releasing her from it he was making it his too.

“Thank you, master,” she whispered. “Now.”

Sip struck again and she screamed beautifully. He remembered how out of it he had been the first time he made her scream in pain. This time, though . . . he could still hear the pain, but he also heard a strange pleasure, excitement, the joy of giving in and letting go, pride . . . and trust. Trust in him.

That was a lot for a single scream to do. Sip swung again, without waiting for her to count or give pace, and the cane hit her right across her upside-down marehood, dislodging a small cluster of fragrant droplets that sailed across the room in slow motion. She was screaming again, louder.

Four strokes was what he had promised her. He put the cane down on the bench beside her and considered how to go about comforting her after the well-received punishment. It would be a long walk around the bench to hug her at the head end; instead he just wrapped his hooves around her upstretched hind legs and squeezed lightly, stroking her fur. After some time her screams gave way to little whimpers.

He let go of her legs and reached in to pull the rag away from her face. “Are you good now?” he asked.

She looked up at him and nodded, a small smile playing through tears.

“I think my slave has deserved a nice little reward now.” His cock had dropped out during the caning, and now he used his hooves to gently spread her hind legs apart, and climbed halfway up on the bench, preparing to stick it into her.

“Um . . .” Her eyes went wide when she saw what he was up to. “If master pleases, perhaps he could restrain this slave before he rewards her?”

He suddenly realized he had not tied her up at all during the scene. Damn, how could he forget that? “Of course,” he said as smoothly as he could while he climbed back down, trying to make it sound like it had been the plan all the time.

Fortunately there were lengths of rope hanging from wall racks at strategic locations throughout the training room, so he didn’t need to rummage around in closets or drawers to find something to make up for his mistake with. He quickly grabbed some and pulled her forelegs out to each side with ropes between her slave hoofcuffs and fixed hooks on the frame of the bench she was lying on – also a universal feature of Clocktower furniture.

Then he fetched the blindfold she had been wearing when he met her – and stumbled again on the realization that he had been blocking her vision for almost the entire session already. But that couldn’t be helped; the experience he imagined she wanted would be a lot better if she couldn’t see coming what he was doing to her. And he could look her in the eyes later, in aftercare. She wore a comfortable smile while he put the blindfold on her, squirming quietly against the ropes pulling on her forehooves.

He used a weaver’s knot to tie another rope into her braided mane and keep it down to the edge of the bench, preventing her from lifting her head. Then he got a pair of sandbags from the bottom shelf of the large-toys closet and placed one on top of each of her outstretched wings. The Earth Pony’s Field Guide had suggested that as a safe and hard-to-get-wrong way to restrain a pegasus lying on her back.

He wasn’t quite sure what to do about her hind legs. Tying them down to the bench would have her lying on the fresh welts from the caning, and he couldn’t bring himself to do that. He ended up using ropes to pull them towards the opposite corners of the bench, on each side of her head. It left her a bit of freedom to wave them around, but he hoped it would do. He had seen mares tied that way in porn; it certainly did leave her marehood wide open to the room.

“There, all nice and helpless now?” he asked.

She struggled genially against her bonds to demonstrate. “Mmmm.”

After all that preparation it would be an anticlimax just to fuck her right away. He got up on the bench beside her and began licking one of her hind legs, from the sensitive frog and backside of the pastern down towards her body. Her fur was damp with sweat that tasted earthen and salty, and he wouldn’t really have liked that, except she was warm and alive under his lips and tongue, and responded to him with cute little yips and jitters.

When he ran out of leg, he shifted around so he could nibble at the fleshy part of a wing while he stretched a hind leg back to rub against her marehood. He felt bold enough to bite down softly, and she gave a little gasp and started breathing faster. He nuzzled onwards slowly from the wing root up along her side, across her breast and neck, and back through the soft fuzz on her belly, moving his head up and down as her ribcage expanded and contracted.

As he neared the region of her teats, he switched out the leg rubbing against her marehood for a forehoof, not just stroking idly, but systematically smearing, grinding, seizing her behind while he ran his muzzle in circles and diagonals across her boobs, building up to suckling each of the teats in turn. She alternated between holding her breath, little squeals and whimpers, and occasionally locking up for a quarter second when his hoof met one of the tender stripes from the cane, but almost instantly getting back to writhing in anticipation.

He had to break contact for a moment to maneuver himself around her near leg and line up with her body. But she only had time to draw a deep breath before he was ready, barrel nestled in the V of her hind legs, cock held ready to spear her and, yet once again, make her his. She let out a short surprised scream as he slid into her, this time definitely one of pleasure and need, and began thrashing wildly in her bonds as he pushed in again and again, drawn in by the warm, soft, pulsating cavity, gradually losing himself until all there was was bliss.

He was spent. He waited for her convulsions to subside a bit and let himself flop gently down to rest on top of her, belly to belly. He could feel her breathing again, and her heartbeat through her skin, tapping a complex syncopated rhythm against his. Allowing himself a selfish moment, he decided to keep lying there, with her, for just a bit before he had to be collected and in charge again. But without getting up he could reach the ropes he had tied her hind legs with, and he pulled on the loose end so the slip knots at her cuffs came apart.

Her legs free, she wrapped them around his loin and pulled him down tightly.

The safe rooms right by the training room they had used were all occupied, so they ended up walking through the dungeons towards the next group of them, side by side. Sip didn’t quite know what to do with himself. The scene had ended, but aftercare had not yet started, or had it? He couldn’t begin hugging and comforting while they were walking.

Eventually he decided just to start talking. “I’m sorry for tricking you.”

“It’s alright. It’s part of the, the play, you know? There has to be a reason.”

She had a point. If she was to be punished (and he was pretty sure, almost, that she wanted that), she needed a way to deserve her punishment. It was for herself to decide to be bad, but his job to give her the opportunity. It did feel a bit underhoofed to let her think she might get away with it, but she had to have known she was misbehaving.

What he really wanted to apologize for was forgetting to tie her up until the end, but he couldn’t find a way to say that. He sought refuge in smalltalk instead.

“So, are you having better luck now at getting doms to pick you?”

He realized too late that was a dangerous question to ask when she brightened up in a happy smile. “Oh, yes!” she said, beaming, and he died a little inside.

“Last week I got bought by a nice colt who taught me positions and had his way with me in the street. And this week he sent me out on errands by myself and spanked me again when I screwed that up.”

“’m happy for you,” he muttered. Wait, something didn’t sound right. “Uh, are you talking about me?”

“Who else?” She reached out a hoof and booped him playfully on the muzzle. “It’s not like I’ve had time to frolic around with anypony else.”

He tried to make sense of that. “So you’re only coming here on Tuesdays?” He had been sure she was looking for other play partners between their sessions. Finding out she didn’t . . . now he felt horribly ashamed at how he had been trying for other mares, unsuccessful though that had been.

She nodded. “Yeah, I’m –” Suddenly her face fell. “Wait, did you really think I’d . . . just do that?” She stopped walking, looking at him with a hurt expression.

Whoops again. He tried his best to find a way to backpedal. “Well, you know, you’re wearing red.” He pointed a hoof at her collar.

“That doesn’t mean I’m going – . . . Perhaps it does. I haven’t really understood how it works.”

“A red collar is if you’re doing scenes with a variety of doms,” he explained. “White is for if you want to find a permanent owner.”

“I know that!” She stomped at the ground with a forehoof. “But that doesn’t help much. What if I’m okay with single scenes, you need to start somewhere, and I can’t really be a chooser, but if the right stallion comes along you don’t want him to pass you by because he thinks you’re only . . . you know –”

“Well, I didn’t make the rules!” He had no idea how he had gotten so defensive. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to start a fight.” He held out a hoof towards her shoulder, suggesting a hug but unsure if it would be appropriate. To his relief she hugged him back.

“I tried to ask one of my mentors,” she said, after they resumed walking. “She just said it’s completely my own choice what color I wear. What kind of help is that?”

Sip grunted sympathetically. One day as he was getting close to finishing his introduction course, a group of older ponies had summoned him to a meeting room and told they were his official mentors and he could ask them anything he wanted about the Society. He hadn’t had any questions to ask then, and later on he saw no reason to seek them out and admit how he was failing as a dom. Pencil Note was enough trouble for him already.

“Suppose I wore white instead,” she said casually. “Would you still have asked me out, back then?”

Sip had an idea this was a question where many of the possible answers would be wrong. He had no idea which of them it was. “I’m not sure,” he said eventually, betting the house on the truth. “I’m afraid I might have chickened out. It’s a lot to commit to, when you don’t have any experience.”

It couldn’t have been all wrong; she kept talking to him. “You’re wearing red too,” she observed.

“Yeah. They said it was a good choice for a newcomer.” He hadn’t given half as much thought to the color of his dominant’s mask as she seemed to have to her collar.

She nodded. “Don’t rush into it. Get to know somepony first.”

“Exactly.” She must have been told that in the introduction too.

He carefully didn’t ask for her opinion of whether he could possibly be that ‘right stallion’ who came along. That would probably be inappropriate for a red collar – and, anyway, there had been plenty of opportunity for herself to speak up if she had any thoughts of that kind.

“But you’re right, there ought to be a color somewhere between red and white, for if you’re open to either kind. Candy-striped, perhaps?”

She chuckled. (Crisis averted!) “I’ll candy-stripe you,” she said.

It was a good aftercare session. Once he had rubbed analgesic on her cane marks, neither of them had a lot to say about the scene itself – she seemed happier with it than he thought he had any right to expect, so he didn’t press the matter. But there were plenty of other things to talk about, starting where they had left off with Daring Do the last time (or was that the time before?) and moving on to other things, books, life outside the Society. She was still living with her parents and working as a ‘cloud counter’, something he hadn’t even known was a thing. He found some things from his own life to talk about that didn’t make it sound terminally dull, and she made a good job of sounding interested.

They ended up on the aftercare bed together, hugging. Eventually she stirred lazily. “Silent,” she said, “do you –”

“Please call me Sip.”

“Sip?”

“It’s what my friends call me.” And his parents and teachers and everypony else. But he hoped she was his friend.

She nodded gravely. “Only if you call me Cirrus.”

“Hmmm?”

“Cirrus. That’s my real name.” She had raised herself up on the fore-elbows and was smiling at him expectantly.

“Sorry, too late. You’ll always be George to me.” He meant that as a joke, but he saw her face fall and knew he’d made a mistake. “But Cirrus is a pretty name too,” he added. “I’ll have to practice it. Cirrus.” He remembered a bit from the introduction classes, about using the sub’s real name a lot in aftercare. Oh, stupid stupid stupid. He reached up to give her a testing little squeeze.

“It means a special kind of cloud,” she said, getting back on her track. “They lay it out very high, where only the strongest fliers can reach. If you get up close it’s not really there, just a kind of white haze. But they’re pretty from below.”

“Then it fits you well. Being pretty, I mean.” He did remember when they met (only two weeks ago?) he had thought she wasn’t all that pretty. He couldn’t recall why. “Thanks for telling me. Cirrus.”

She was relaxing a bit, letting her weight return to his chest. He put his hooves back around her, massaging the root of her wings even though he didn’t really know how. “I’m glad you’re not so high up you can’t be reached.”

“Mmmm.” She nuzzled against his chest fur. “It was stupid trying to keep it a secret.”

“No, no – you have to protect yourself.” It was funny; outside the Clocktower ponies knew each other’s names when they started dating, but it might be a long time before they had sex. Here it was exactly backwards. “We’re freaks, aren’t we?” he asked the world in general.

She kept lying on top of him. “See if I care,” she responded.

He didn’t either, really.

Cirrus!