The Mistress In Red

Whether it’s from the original legends, any books based off of them, any of the movies (yes, even Disney’s cartoon version or Mel Brook’s Men in Tights), or the BBC tv show.

Genderbents and OCs welcome.

After all, she wasn’t the only animal in this particular cage.

Rather than addressing any of the terrible things that she had spoken of, the training that had turned her into the instrument of destruction that Guy saw before him today, he latched onto her last question with a quirk of his lip that might have passed for a smile on someone else. “If I say yes do I get a kiss?” he asked cockily.

It might have been courting disaster, he knew it, but Guy couldn’t help but push his luck. The worst she could do was to kill him, and he’d been tortured and faced death often enough in his life to be able to stare it in the eye without flinching. Jacin was death personified and she might have terrified other men, but Guy was not like other men. When you had nothing left to lose and little to live for, death became a fascinating and seductive mistress rather than a monster that hid under the bed at night.

Now that she was looking at him with a faint glimmer of amusement in her eyes he folded his arms across his chest and studied her like he hadn’t taken the opportunity to do before. Guy could see shades of the girl she’d been in the woman before him, the sharp green eyes that flashed at him, the smirk that tugged at her lips, the wisps of blonde hair that escaped around her face and softened the severe look. He was more than happy to admit that she’d grown into a stunning woman – not just beautiful, no. Beautiful women, once you’d looked at them for a while, got boring. Jacin had an interesting face, one that Guy was fairly certain he could spend years looking at without ever discovering every nuance and expression.

Not that she would ever stand for such nonsense, he acknowledged with an inward smile.

Turning his attention back to the business at hand, Guy turned his back on her – possibly a dangerous move, but a calculated risk – and gestured at the room. “If there is anything else you need here, you will let me know.”

He was under no illusions that Jacin would need anything from him, though if Guy was honest with himself he could think of any number of things he would offer her if she showed even the faintest hint of interest. Dangerous she might have been, the brutality of her past and the aggression he could see in her tightly-controlled movements and expressions only served to intrigue him more, and Guy wondered for a fleeting moment what she would do if he turned around, pushed her back against the wall and kissed her.

Was he serious? The very question alone caused Jacin’s dark brows to arch up into her hairline. Unfamiliar with such a teasing little advance from a man, Jacin took a small step back and regarded her former childhood companion with a mixture of amusement and befuddlement, arms lifting to cross beneath her leather-clad breasts while her thick blonde braid remained rested over one shoulder. Had this been twenty years earlier, and he’d offered an exchange of sweet words for even sweeter kisses, Jacin was not proud to admit that her younger self would have all but leaped at the chance. Bewitched by the charm of the youthful noble boy, Jacin vividly recalled herself lying awake at night with her eyes cast to the bedroom ceiling, heart a flutter while she envisioned what it could feel like to have Guy’s hand entwined with hers…

Foolish childhood dreams, they were, and Jacin was relieved that her Mord’Sith teachers had ripped those thoughts and desires from her naïve little heart with each agonizing strike of their Agiels. The advances of men were nothing to her now, if any of them even dared try it anyways. Mord’Sith were not women that men fantasized about in the late hours; not the women that men loved, men married, men created families with. Mord’Sith were trained killers and torturers, and only a rare few ever took a mate in life, though they chose only from the men they had trained into obedience, and only for breeding purposes to gain new daughters to shape into leather-clad mistresses.

Jacin never knew the touch of a man that was not clinging to her legs like a whimpering dog, his face sweat-slicked and beaten bloody as he pathetically begged for his beloved Mistress to command him. The caress of loving hands against her skin or through her hair, the pressing of mouths and exchanging of pleasure… Jacin was utterly unfamiliar with the feeling. Even now, gazing up into the penetrating stormy eyes of the man she would have given anything to marry twenty years ago, all the Mord’Sith felt was bitter distaste at his lack of respect for her. Where butterflies had once fluttered, a cold and echoing emptiness lingered.

Guy was playing with fire.

As he turned away from her, Jacin’s eyes narrowed darkly. No sane person on God’s good earth would ever show their back to a Mord’Sith. If she so chose it, Jacin could have pressed the tip of her Agiel right against her former companion’s spine, the thick black leather he cloaked himself with useless in muffling the agony that would drop him to his knees and render him paralyzed. But, she was feeling unusually merciful this morning, and instead hooked the chain of her Agiel back on her belt and stepped forward until her body pressed flush against Guy’s from behind. She could feel his breath hitch at the sudden and unexpected closeness between them, their leathers squeaking together while silver buckles dug sharply into hard bodies. Guy was firm and broad against her, and Jacin had to rise up on the tips of her toes in order to be of proper height in comparison to him. His dark hair curled beautifully behind the shell of his ear, and Jacin reached around to clamp one gloved hand firmly around his throat; not enough to deprive him of air, but certainly enough to leave a bruise behind.

Her voice was a purr against his ear, and Jacin tried to ignore the spiced and musky scent of leather and warm male skin that lingered on him. “The only thing I need from you… is to stay out of my way.”

Without allowing her former companion a moment to reply, the Mord’Sith released her hold on his throat and shoved him forward roughly. Guy stumbled out into the stone corridor, and Jacin slammed the wooden door to the little torture chamber firmly shut behind him. Through the thick wood and stone she could clearly hear Guy curse softly, which pulled a satisfied smirk from Jacin’s lips even as she wondered why her heart had suddenly become a volcanic roar in her ears.

She remained alone for the remainder of the day, fixing the iron shackles that would bind her victims and suspend them a foot from the floor to the rafters above, and testing the acoustics of the chamber by striking the stone wall with her whip, relishing in the sharp snapping echo of each violent lash. The Sheriff certainly had fine taste in finding suitable spaces for Mord’Sith to work, and she emerged from the chambers later that evening with her fingers itching to cause damage to something weak and begging. Hands stroking down her twisted blonde braid, Jacin found Vaisey in the dining hall as a grand feast was being laid out, the scent of roasted meat and parsnips and sweet tarts heavy in the air. Guy sat at the Sheriff’s immediate left, goblet extended to a servant girl who filled it with deep red wine. Opposite him sat a young woman that Jacin did not recognize. Lovely she was, with ringlets of rich brown hair, rosy cheeks, and round blue eyes. The girl fiddled uneasily with a handkerchief on her lap, and wore a soft green dress that accentuated the womanly curves of her form.

“Ah, Mistress,” Vaisey called once he noticed her in the doorway. “Gisborne tells me the torture chamber was to your liking? Excellent!” He practically squawked with glee. “Won’t you join us for dinner? I think our dear Lady Marian should get to know a real woman of power during her stay here in the castle.”

Curious, Jacin strode forward into the dining hall, ignoring the burn of Guy’s eyes as they fixed themselves upon her. She drew back a chair at the long mahogany table, the jarring sound of the wooden legs scraping loudly against the stone floor causing a handful of the servants to flinch. Jacin settled herself next to Guy, one long leg crossed over the other.

“Marian, our dear Mistress here is a Mord’Sith. Do you know what a Mord’Sith is?” Vaisey asked before he popped a small tomato into his mouth, its juice squirting across the table as he bit into the firm red flesh.

“Nothing good, I’d imagine,” Marian replied, her eyes surprisingly cold.

Jacin smiled in a way that a mother would smile down at a very small and very naïve child, an immediate dislike for the girl boiling in her veins. She leaned forward, then, elbows rested on the table while her voice dropped to a silken drawl. “Not unless you understand and respect the fact that I can leap over this table and have you dead at my feet in less than a minute without once spilling a drop of blood. And, of course, this is after I instil upon you a pain so violently excruciating that not even God can grant you mercy. So… you’re correct. Forget your place around me, and I will be nothing good at all.”

She was dangerous, and suddenly Vaisey’s plan made a great deal more sense.

Guy had seen the way her gaze had narrowed on him for a moment, a flicker of what looked like recognition in her eyes, but then it passed and he was left trying to figure out why those eyes looked so eerily familiar to him as well. Had he met her at some point, perhaps before returning to Nottingham? Guy liked to think he would have remembered a woman of her grace and beauty, but he was honest enough to acknowledge that over the years the faces and names of the women he’d had were blurred and hazy now, so it was possible that they had known one another once upon a time. Looking at the woman in red now, though, Guy only hoped that, whatever they might have been in the past, it ended well – he was fairly certain he did not want her angry at him. Despite everything, he still had a very healthy sense of self-preservation and he had no doubt that the woman who was facing the Sheriff now could bring an abrupt end to him if it suited her.

The woman seemed less than impressed by Vaisey’s greeting and introduction, her face (where had he seen her before? It was like an itch in the back of his mind…) only shades away from sneering at the Sheriff, and Guy felt his respect for her grow incrementally. That respect turned to fascination when Vaisey attempted to glean her name, instead being struck down abruptly when the honey-rich voice corrected the title with which he was to address her instead of offering her given name.

Mistress, was it? Interesting.

Vaisey interrupted his distracted thoughts with a snide remark about raiding each other’s wardrobes and Guy bit back a sigh, managing - just barely - to curb the eye roll that seemed to be his natural state these days. But then he saw the subtle, almost imperceptible reaction she had to his name and Guy pinned her with a steady look, blue eyes locked with green as an eerie moment of recognition flashed through him…but then it was gone when the Sheriff nudged him with one bony elbow.

“Gisborne, take…Mistress,” Vaisey paused, giving her a candy-coated smile that Guy knew hid his annoyance at the title, “and show her around our little play room, why don’t you? Since the two of you will be working so…closely.”

The innuendo in Vaisey’s tone set Guy’s teeth on edge but he nodded. “Of course, my Lord.”

Without waiting to see if she was following him, Guy led the way back up the steps and down the hallway toward the dungeon, not stopping until he’d reached the lower level, going to the special room the Sheriff had set up for her to work her ‘magic’ on Robin Hood and anyone else he felt deserved her attentions.

“I trust this will be adequate for your purposes?” Guy asked, turning to see her studying him and not the room as he’d expected. Something about her expression caught him, and as his memories struggled to resurface those sharp green eyes seared into him. Blonde hair, green eyes, skinned knees and the smell of fresh-cut hay on a summer’s afternoon…

Christ.

Then again, the little bright eyed girl with dandelions in her hair that Guy had known all those years ago was no longer standing before him, now.

He brought her to a room separate from the dank, foul cells of the dungeon. Jacin only briefly glanced around Guy’s shoulder and in through the doorway. Any room, regardless of its size or location, would serve to benefit a Mord’Sith. As long as there were shutters on the windows to blot out the light, and beams on the ceiling sturdy enough to support the weight of a full grown man as he thrashed and screamed while suspended from iron chains, she would be content. Jacin’s current focus, however, was not on the accommodations provided, but rather her old childhood companion. She watched silently as Guy turned to face her, his features distorting as though a tidal wave of memories had come rushing forth to the forefront of his mind. The color suddenly drained itself from his face, and he stared wide-eyed at the Mord’Sith with a look of absolute horror…

…and recognition.

 A wicked smirk spread across Jacin’s lips. “I was wondering how long it would take you to figure out it was me.” Stepping around him, her shoulder ever-so-slightly brushing across his chest, the Mord’Sith strode into the little room. It was pleasantly cool inside, with curved stone walls and a soaring ceiling with the tiniest of windows high above in the rafters, way out of reach for anyone to get to. Warm sunlight speared its way into the room, striking the opposite wall, and she stood watching as speckles of dust danced in the golden stream, her back to Guy. “Dead… well I suppose that’s how the Mord’Sith like to make it look, when they come in the night and steal little girls from their beds. To be chosen by such an elite group of warriors is one of the greatest honors, but I did not know it back then. It’s a wonder no one heard my screams, or the shouts of my parents as they, too, were dragged from our home. We were the only ones they took from Locksley that night.”

On the heel of her boot, Jacin turned, blonde braid swinging around to settle over her shoulder. She watched Guy in the doorway, gloved fingertips tapping and stroking along the length of her Agiel, the shocks of pain making her nerve endings buzz. “I sometimes wondered what went through your mind the next morning when the village discovered our house empty and ransacked, when no trace of our bodies were ever seen again.” She smiled slowly. “Little did you know of the things I would have to endure to become what you see right now.”

Jacin’s fingers closed around the handle of her Agiel, drawing it from her belt so that she could hold it properly for Guy to see. “To anyone without knowledge of a Mord’Sith, they’d think the object in my hands relatively harmless.” She explained. The Agiel was a long thin rod bound in red leather which hung from a single golden chain, sleek and simple. “Little do you know, this weapon carries with it the ability to mortify the flesh, tissue, and muscle, with enough power to shatter bones and even stop the heart when mastered. A single touch brings with it the kiss of pain so agonizing, not even death seems a sweet enough release. The Mord’Sith use this weapon—the Agiel—to torture and train their captives into absolute submission, turning even the most headstrong man into an obedient dog beneath her boot.”

Pacing in slow circles around the room, she continued to speak, her green eyes trained on Guy like a predator. “Mord’Sith are created under the kiss of an Agiel, mercilessly tortured at the age from which they were taken captive. At nine years old, I was broken into absolute obedience by my Mistress with this very weapon that I now wield, shattering my sense of self and personal desires. That was the first trial. The second would be to watch my Mistress use this Agiel to slowly and brutally torture and break my mother, before killing her. This trial rid me of compassion. The third and final trial was to have me use this Agiel to inflict pain and suffering onto my own father, breaking him until obedience and eventually a slow and agonizing death by my own hands. Then, and only then, was I named a full and true Mord’Sith. By the time winter struck Locksley following my kidnapping, and you and Isabella were building castles in the snow, I was already donned in red leather to mask the blood of my victims.”

When Jacin halted her pacing, she stood directly in front of Guy. He did not flinch away from the Mord’Sith’s presence, much to her surprise, and she silently wondered if it was his pride keeping his feet grounded or his lack of fear. The latter was certainly the less likely of the two. She had never encountered a man in her near twenty years of being a Mord’Sith that did not shrink away when she got too close.

The brave and gallant little Guy of Gisborne would be no exception.

It was impossible to mistake the glee on the Sheriff’s face – Guy had seen it too many times in too many different (and always unpleasant) situations to think it was anything other than the mischievous, malicious joy he found in bringing suffering to others. And today appeared to be no exception. He’d come up with a brilliant plan, it seemed, one designed to bring about the end of Robin Hood and his gang of Outlaws once and for all.

Of course, Guy acknowledged, there had been many such plans over the past two years, and none of them had been the glaring success that Vaisey hoped they would be. Unfortunately he was almost always ready to assign the blame to Guy, which was nothing new either. But this plan, the Sheriff had crowed, was going to be utterly fool-proof. There was no way that Robin Hood was going to get out of this in one piece. Vaisey had hinted to Guy in a cruel, oily tone of voice that the outlaw would pray for death before it would be granted to him, that the next days of his life would be shrouded in pain and suffering beyond his own imaginings.

Guy had just sighed and rolled his eyes, having heard it all before.

Now, though, standing in his place at the Sheriff’s left shoulder as always, Guy wondered if there wasn’t more to this than he had originally thought.

“Now, I would not expect such simpletons as yourselves to have ever heard of them,” Vaisey announced with a smirk. “But we are expecting a very important visitor to Nottingham. One of the Mord’Sith will be arriving shortly to help us with our…little outlaw problem.”

At the complete lack of response from the gathered nobles, the Sheriff sighed dramatically. What had he expected, really? “They are a secretive order of warriors, not well-known to outsiders. And they are masters in the art of torture. Our little Robin Red-Breast won’t know what hit him by the time our guest is through with him.”

Guy listened to the speech, trying to keep his own sighs and eye-rolls to a minimum, knowing this plan was going to go the same way all of their other plans went: Hood and his miscreants would find a way to escape, no matter how good this master torturer was, and the brunt of the frustrated abuse would fall on Guy’s shoulders.

He could hardly wait.

Just as the Sheriff was about to expand on his plan, the sound of horses and the shout of a stable lad reached them and Vaisey’s grin widened. “Ahh, it appears our guest has arrived. Wonderful,” he said, clapping like an idiot child.

Back then, to the eyes of a young child sitting perched atop her father’s shoulders while he did business, Nottingham had been a place of fairytales; the home of gallant knights and mighty Lords and Ladies more beautiful than even the princesses in her storybooks. Its crowded streets and alleyways filled with laughter and music and the shuffle of stallions pulling heavy carts overflowing with treasures. Jacin had been enthralled by it all, the strange sights and smells and sounds lingering with her long after she had returned home to Locksley and lay awake in her bed, eyes trained on the ceiling as she dreamed of one day living in a place like that. Of opening her shutters wide and watching the strange and beautiful people go about their daily lives, of strolling through the marketplace and perhaps being swept away by a handsome man donned in leather and shimmering armor with a sword at his hip.

Nearly twenty years later, as she rode in through the city gates atop her stormy dappled mare, Jacin hardly recognized the town that had once so easily captivated her. The dusty streets were crawling with beggars, their bony hands outstretched in a silent plead for coins and food, faces reddened with sores and disease. Whores with painted lips and plump bosoms curled themselves around wooden posts, their sunken eyes and graceful hands latching onto men that stumbled drunk out of the local tavern. Jacin turned up her nose as she trotted passed on her horse, a sneer of revulsion crossing her features. The bustling crowds parted like the sea as she approached, creating a clear path toward the looming castle ahead. It was doubtful that any of these wretched people new of what she was, as the Mord’Sith were highly elite and incredibly secretive. But, anyone who did not move away from an armed woman layered in leather as deep and red as freshly spilled blood deserved to be trampled by hooves.

Crossing the threshold into the castle courtyard, Jacin steered her mare toward the stables, a faint smirk crossing her features as the boy that emerged lost all color from his sweet little face. With a swift swing of one long leg, she dismounted, her thick blonde braid swaying with the momentum. Sa’Din, her beloved dappled mare as deep and grey as rolling thunderheads, hoofed at the cobblestone impatiently. She threw the reins into the lad’s hands, and watched his adam’s apple bob in his narrow throat as he swallowed thickly.

“Have the servants take my things into my room, and try not to filthy anything up, will you?” Jacin said softly in that low, husky tone of hers, not having to raise her voice in order to get her point across. It was the beauty of being Mord’Sith; how the softest breath of a whisper could instil fear in men, no matter the age. The boy took a small step back and nodded once.

She turned and made for the castle entrance, the two heavily armed guards perched on either side not even bothering to halt her as she threw open the heavy wooden doors and marched right in. Below, a meeting seemed to be taking place, a good dozen or so Lords in their puffed elaborate garb all seated together in a semi-circle facing what could only be the Sheriff of Nottingham in all his glory. If glory meant a balding, mousy insect of a man in what looked more like a sleeping gown and slippers than anything else. The hum of conversation died down into a deathly silence as she marched down the winding wooden staircase leading her into the grand hall, her boots cracking like hammer strikes with each step she took. Her Agiel, which hung from a delicate golden chain at her belt, swung and struck her upper thigh, sending a tidal wave of agony pulsing through her body every time, though Jacin felt nothing. Her iron hard gaze focused itself on the Sheriff, and then glided ever so slightly to his left, where a towering shadow of a man stood guard, his broad body clad in leather so black, that it seemed to drink in the very light in the room. Jacin’s green eyes narrowed slightly, sensing an odd familiarity about him, though she couldn’t quite place her finger on it.

Oh, it couldn’t be…

“A woman?” One of the nobles piped in with a laugh. “You’ve hired a woman to solve the Outlaw problem? What on earth is she going to do? Embroider them to death?”

As slow as a serpent, Jacin turned her head and fixed the speaker of those words with a gaze so cold, it caused the laughter that had burst free from him and his surrounding companions to choke in their throats. Satisfied, Jacin looked toward the Sheriff, who had risen from his seat and approached her with arms outstretched in a welcoming gesture. His leather-clad henchman remained where he stood. Jacin cocked a brow, and the mousy little man dropped his arms with a nervous smile. A tiny red jewel sat embedded in one of his canines.

“Oh, isn’t this exciting!” The Sheriff practically bounced on the balls of his feet. “At last, someone who understands the delicate beauty of torture. Welcome to Nottingham, my Lady…?”

Lady? Hardly. “You’ll refer to me as Mistress, if you please.”

“I-I…” The Sheriff stumbled across his words, like the very thought of addressing Jacin by her respective and well-earned Mord’Sith title was demeaning to him, but he grinned regardless. “Very well, Mistress.” His beady eyes ran down the length of the red leather and silver buckles that covered Jacin from the throat down. “Lookie, Gisborne! You two can raid each others wardrobes!”

They made him uneasy, incredible uneasy. He knew Guy had suffered his fair share of torture already, he feared for him under their employers temper. It made him clumsy. And so he kept shoving papers from the table by accident. He was worried for his cousin, who was supposed to go out to hunt Hood later. And the bottled up worry expressed itself that way.

How ironic that one of those girls had to find the book he misplaced in a fit. He turned to her and nodded.

There was something else that Jacin detected. Something far more familiar. The man was uneasy in her presence, like the very sight of her left a foul bitter taste against the back of his tongue. She did not sense much fear, but oh… yes, there was resentment, disgust. The usual sort of things the world felt toward a Mord’Sith.

He was just like all the others.

He soon stopped eating.

Once the dishes were gathered, Jacin carried them over to the sink, and was pleasantly relieved to see that Guy had a washer. There would be no need to waste valuable conversation time getting her sleeves wet. She loaded the dishes into the machine, much like if she lived there herself. His words caught her attention.