The Stone of Harmony

After the stretchers had left, Luce, Nancy, and Ireni allowed themselves to reveal their excitement over the intense tickle to come. The only worry I could see in them was a worry about their masters. They had a point, I had to admit. I was shaking like a leaf and stumbling as if drunk from the two eraruc wards I had triggered.

I let my arbi put the three slavegirls into a coffle for the march to the distillery, restricting myself to supervising. For the walk to the distillery, all three girls wore leather foot-wrappings rather than sandals. At this moment even a tiny increase in malpod would be a bad thing. I followed behind them, with an arbi at each elbow, and I noticed how they avoided looking back at me.

When we reached the stocks at the back of the distillery, I considered and discarded the idea of using only the three-place set of stocks in the center. Instead, I ordered Ireni to a single-seater to my left, Luce to the center position of the three-place stocks, and Nancy to the single-seat stock to my right. I sat on a stool in front, far enough back to easily watch them all, and to supervise as the arbi did the work. After they had locked the three girls in place, bare feet exposed and vulnerable, I directed the arbi to hang a new malpod glass above and behind each slavegirl, out of their sight but where I could easily monitor them. Like mine, Peter and van Isaac’s old malpod glasses had broken when the second eraruc ward overloaded them.

I stood and shambled over to Luce. “You looked like you were in a hurry to get here,” I told her.

“Well, yes, master,” Luce admitted. She gave me a sunny smile. “If the matter weren’t so serious, this would be fun.”

“Fun,” I repeated, before leaning in to kiss her. My Ear heard her excitement and eagerness; Luce enjoyed being tickled, as long as it didn’t offend her aesthetic sensibilities.

“The tickling doesn’t bother me even then, master,” she said, showing off her ability to deduce my thoughts. “Just wearing sandals when it’s a fad rather than a practical necessity.”

“Saucy slavegirl,” I told her. “If you don’t find this ‘fun,’ then you can consider it the punishment for your sauciness.”

Luce just grinned, and I managed to grin back, despite my misgivings. I made myself avoid glancing up at malpod glass hanging behind Luce. The liquid within was ink-black, and the tickle-session needed to clarify it would be, at best, too much of a good thing.

I shambled back to my stool and pulled out my hipflask. It had only a little aqua vita left in it, and I decided to save it for Luce. I also made a mental note to replenish my aqua vita – after my malpod was completely discharged – and ordered the tickle-session to begin.

Three arbi moved forward, with a fourth remaining beside me, holding a glass jar that I didn’t want to risk holding myself. It was an old jar from van Isaac’s supplies, one I feared we would need before the end. The ink-black liquid in all three malpod glasses indicated a heavier burden of malpod than I’d ever seen anyone suffer before.

The arbi started to tickle. Luce began to giggle and squirm at once, clenching her toes as wooden fingers lightly teased her soles. Nancy and Ireni squirmed too, but held back their laughter until the steady tickle-tease finally forced it out. Unlike Luce, they both had their large toes thonged in place. I hadn’t specified this, but those two arbi had secured and tickled Nancy and Ireni before, and so had repeated the details of their last session.

After a time, the arbi tickling Luce switched to a feather fan. It was a plain fan, without any elixiring, but still effective at producing giggles. I found myself wanting to try my own hand at teasing Luce’s soles, and reminded myself that I had to watch all three slavegirls, and to pace their tickling. I needed to make sure that rest breaks were frequent enough and long enough to keep the slavegirls from being ‘tickled out’ before the malpod was completely discharged. The slavegirls would want to rush things, even though they knew better. They’d want more tickling: As much as possible as quickly as possible, until they were gorged with laughter. So they relied on me to prolong the tickling; to make it last long enough to discharge their masters’ malpod.

As I listened to the laughter, my thoughts wandered to van Isaac and Peter. It would take between two and four days for their broken bones to heal, even with aqua vita and the stronger elixirs that bonesetters used. Amber and Jade’s fawning would ease the pain, as would Ireni and Nancy’s once the tickle-session ended, but that wouldn’t speed the healing.

I wanted to get this malpod discharged in a single session, if possible. But it might not be possible. Given its unnatural intensity it could take two or three sessions to discharge. Or even more; further tickle-sessions would suffer from diminishing returns. I wanted to avoid that. So did my three ‘victims.’ They enjoyed being tickled, but they also wanted to relieve their masters as quickly as they could.

After calling for the third break in the tickling, I second-guessed myself. It was too soon. Calling for rest breaks more and more frequently would lead to this session ending before the malpod was discharged. Then we would have to do this again tomorrow morning. I cut the break short, signaling for the arbi to start tickling again. The slavegirls once more began to laugh, and the malpod glasses finally, grudgingly, beginning to lighten.

I let the arbi work on the slavegirls feet for as long as I dared before calling for a fourth break. Luce and Ireni sagged, while Nancy sat erect. But I suspected that Nancy was concealing her fatigue. I had an arbi give her aqua vita from Peter, while Ireni took a swallow of van Isaac’s and Luce drank the last from my hipflask. That helped, at least with fatigue, but all three slavegirls were showing signs of becoming ‘tickled out.’

The situation called for a new departure. I’d been hoping to avoid it, but the time had come to use van Isaac’s tickle cream.

My shaking had diminished and my malpod glass, behind Luce, was lighter than before, but I still moved carefully to open the old glass jar. The gunk inside looked like petroleum jelly, but wasn’t. Instead it had a complicated name that hardly anyone used, along with its trivial one.

Some masters swore by tickle cream for discharging malpod. So did some slavegirls. The majority, however, swore at it instead. They might try it once, like van Isaac and his Ireni, or they might be like Luce and me, avoiding it because of its reputation. But now we faced the sort of extreme situation that called for the stuff.

I grinned at Ireni, hiding my unease as my arbi moved my stool to set it before her feet. She grinned back as I sat down. She recognized the jar, of course, and remembered the one time van Isaac had used its contents on her. I glopped out a two-finger dollop and held it up.

“Do you have anything to say?” I asked. “Or will you just laugh at me?” Before she had a chance to answer, I smeared the dollop onto her feet and began to massage it in. She squeaked and squealed and giggle-whimpered in response.

I couldn’t hear her with my Ear, of course, since she belonged to van Isaac rather than to me. In fact, it would normally be rude for me to touch her at all. A tickle-session, however, is one of the accepted exceptions to the general ‘look, but don’t touch’ rule that Islander masters follow with slavegirls that don’t belong to them.

“I (giggle) needed this, my lord,” Ireni said as I continued the tickle-massage. “I never (giggle giggle) never expected to use it again, but (giggle) but right now I need it!”

I gave her a look, wishing for a moment that my Ear could hear her. She returned as serious a nod as she could manage, given the giggles leaking out. I stood up again. An arbi picked up my stool, and a second one stationed itself before Ireni’s feet. I signaled for it to wait. I didn’t want to start the next bout of tickling until I had treated the feet of all three slavegirls.

I bypassed Luce and crossed over to sit before Nancy. An arbi carried both my stool and the jar. I was feeling steadier, or so I told myself, but the jar was the only supply of tickle cream the distillery had. Once again I grinned to hide my unease. Nancy responded with a small smile and said, “I never tried this before, my lord. I never needed to.”

“You can compare notes with Luce, then,” I said, taking the jar and applying a dollop to Nancy’s feet. As I rubbed the tickle-cream in, I admired the contrast between Nancy’s cream-and-pink soles and the dark chocolate of the rest of her skin. Mostly to avoid having to pay attention to her whimpering, I admitted to myself. But it turned out I had misinterpreted the whimpers.

“Ohh!” Nancy’s teeth flashed white in her dark and merry face. “I like this! I’ll have to beg Master Peter to buy some!” Then the giggles took her as I gave her feet one last tickle-rub.

“Crazy girl,” I told her, hiding my relief behind a doleful shake of my head. The look she gave me in return said that she had seen right through me. I handed the jar back to my arbi, and we moved over to Luce.

When I rubbed the tickle cream into Luce’s feet, I couldn’t help but listen. I braced myself for the finger-nails-on-blackboard sensation – but it wasn’t nearly as bad as I had expected. It was less intense than the one that came from a normal tickle, rather than more. Luce’s enjoyment came clearly past the disturbing mental screee that she was thankfully obvious to.

In addition, I could hear Luce’s relief as the malpod started to drain away again. Slavegirls normally can’t sense malpod, which is why their masters carry malpod glasses. In this case, however, the malpod was so unnaturally strong that Luce could feel its pressure.

“I (giggle) you (giggle) master (giggle giggle)” Luce was laughing and squirming too much to put two words together.

“That’s all right,” I told her as I continued to rub the cream into her bare feet. “You can tell me about it afterwards.” Luce’s head bobbed in agreement as her laughter poured out. But according to my Ear she desperately wanted to tell me something. She wanted to speak words that would make me laugh.

“Master!” Luce gasped. “Bring (giggle giggle giggle) bring (giggle giggle) Bring it on!”

It worked. I burst into laughter myself. Shaking my head, I handed the jar back to my arbi and moved my stool back to where I could watch all three slavegirls. I waved my hand, and the three arbi standing by the three sets of stocks began to apply a new tickle.

This time the arbi didn’t apply feathers, or wooden fingers, or pewter spoons to the three pairs of trapped soles. Instead, they just waved those things in the general direction of the slavegirls’ feet. That was enough. All three girls burst into wild shrieks and screams of laughter. They could feel the tickle without being physically touched. They could even feel it, as I proved by experiment, when the feathers and other implements were wiggled at their feet from nearly a yard away.

I made myself listen carefully to the squeals and shrieks. When I did, I could tell that they were squeals of pleasure. When my concentration wavered, they sounded like shrieks of suffering. It was, I realized, analogous to the fingernails-on-chalkboard my Ear heard when I tickled Luce. The tickle-sounds bothered me, but not the slavegirls. They were enjoying themselves. They’d be limp as noodles at the end, but they’d also be happy, smiling noodles.

The malpod-sensing liquid in the little glass feet faded and clarified. I had to split my attention between that and the squirming and giggling. I had to pace this last part of the tickle-session, bringing it to a stop once the malpod was fully discharged. The slavegirls couldn’t see the malpod glasses, and so would push too hard, deliberately overdoing things in an attempt to be sure.

I gritted my teeth and smiled, resisting the urge to call for yet another rest break. I’d been right to worry that this tickle session would turn into a bout of tickle torture. What I hadn’t expected was that I’d be the one who suffered.

Tickle Scene from The Stone of Harmony