I sat back in my chair, my body relaxed after a bath and a glass of cool wine. A sheer silken robe barely covered my nakedness, and the fabric glided pleasingly over my skin when the air stirred among the marble columns. While the hairdresser ran a fine-toothed comb through my raven hair, I watched Anderi being prepared for his first service as the Prize.

He lay on the serving tray, a marvelously wrought silver platter large enough to hold a reclining man, which rested on a monstrous work table in the center of the room. Though Chef could usually be persuaded to place several layers of linen between naked skin and cold silver, in winter one might turn blue before the make-up was finished. Now, in late spring, it was a bit more bearable. Still, a gentle breeze made its way in from the shaded courtyards several rooms beyond, lifting the loosely woven drapes that purported to give us privacy.

“No, no, no,” scolded Fernini, the stage manager, a stern former Statue who was still handsome, despite his advancing years. “You must hold your arms perfectly still, one supporting you, one stretched out in a long line,” he said, demonstrating by running a finger up Anderi’s arm, across his collar bones, and down the other arm, “If you sag or even quiver, the food will fall.”

Anderi drew in a breath and tried again, molding his body into the position Fernini wanted. I smiled, admiring him; he really was a lovely young man. But there was something tentative in his pose – well-toned and strong as he was, Anderi had no talent for holding a position for very long. Sure enough, even as Fernini began to drape clusters of grapes on his outstretched arms, Anderi’s left shoulder shook.

Fernini sighed and caught the grapes as they fell. “This won’t do. You’re beautiful, Anderi, but you’re better as a dancer or an upright. For serving, you’re shit.”

I smiled at his bluntness and let my head fall back as the hairdresser tugged a little on a tangled lock. I loved having my hair combed; I always had.

“Timri,” said Fernini, his voice weary. “I’ll call Mela. She’ll have to do your make-up in a hurry.”

I glanced through half-closed eyes as Anderi sat up, his head lowered in anger at his failure. Still, far better to fail here, in the staging area, than out in the dining room in front of the King and fifty of his guests.

The hairdresser finished her work, leaving my hair a shining black river down my back. Mela took her place and I rose and shed my robe. Mela’s strong, warm hands rubbed a rosemary and citrus lotion into my skin. With a soft puff, she dusted me in a fine coating of sugar mixed with corn starch to give me a flawless finish. My lips were painted with berry stain and my eyelids shadowed with finely ground cocoa. For most Statues – dancers and uprights, the make-up was purely for show. But for dinner servers, every substance that touched our bodies – even our soap and shampoo – was approved by Chef. We were living dishes, after all, there could be nothing on our skin that didn’t taste good. Tonight, I was sweet; the night before, I had left the staging area rubbed with olive oil and powdered with salt to serve the fish course.

I padded across the immaculate marble floor and used my fingertips to lift myself onto the tray and into position; with only a few practiced movements I was settled onto the linen with not a grain of sugar out of place. Fernini gazed into my blue eyes and shook his head. “Ever reliable, my Timri,” he murmured.

I suppressed the urge to smile broadly and satisfied myself with modestly averting my eyes. I was proud of my abilities; I worked hard to excel as a Statue. But I was aware – more than most, I think – that I owed my position to the whim of Fate. She had painted me with beauty and given me a fine form, and because of that I lived in luxury and pleasure. Had I been born with the slightest physical flaw, I would be merely the pretty fourth son of a tenant farmer in the poverty-stricken eastern lands.

A servant brought Fernini a silver tray on which rested a small cushion. Nestled on top was a small, faceted crystal vial, a bit longer than my longest finger and about twice as wide. A bulbous top stoppered it; the bottom end was rounded so that it could not be stood upright. A silk cord trailed from its neck. Fernini took this cord and slid the vial carefully over my head. It was the one accoutrement every Statue had to wear, could never leave the staging area without. There were lords in the kingdom who were known to dance the edge of orgasm at the mere sight of it, and with good reason.

Fernini laid the vial in the hollow of my throat where it would not roll off. It felt cool for a few moments, until it began to take on the heat of my body. Later, I would be glad of that warmth.

Servants came in from the kitchen, bearing trays of fruit – berries and citrus, apples and pears. A faint smell of cinnamon wafted from them. Behind them came Chef, eager to oversee the construction of the evening’s masterpiece.

“Pose,” Fernini snapped.

I lay on my side, drew up a knee, arched my back, and positioned my arms as Anderi had. Chef and his assistants began to drape me with slices of melon, apple, pear, clusters of grapes, . I could feel the soft plink of berries being dropped into whatever niche or crevice would hold them.

“Wonderful,” exclaimed Chef, who had come in to observe. “He’s a masterpiece. And he hasn’t moved a muscle.”

“He won’t,” Fernini assured him. “He’s the best Statue I have.”

I did smile then, too pleased to hide it.

I worked hard for that praise. It was all right, every once in a while, to acknowledge it.

#

The party was well under way when my turn came. The King was entertaining all fifty of his Counselor Lords, from the highest-ranking to the barely-worthy. The large dining hall, so vast and echoing when empty, was littered tonight with thick rugs, soft lounging cushions, meal trays, wine cups, and reclining men.

Uprights had been performing in the background all night, quietly posing their flawless bodies in the ivory candlelight. They were lovely, their pale skin and even their hair dusted white to mimic marble. It was not sugar that covered them, though, but talc; the uprights were not for eating, they were for looking at. The uprights performed by finding a pose, carefully choreographed to show off their bodies, holding it for a few moments, then slowly gliding into the next pose. The art required a startling level of concentration, but a Statue could not advance without mastering it.

The guests were most of the way to drunk on the King’s wine, sated with meat and bread and savories.

I was dessert.

Fernini led the Statues bearing my tray to the entry way, guiding them so they would not have to do so much as turn their heads to make sure of where they were. Jostling me was not even to be contemplated.

Servants pulled the curtains aside, and I heard the dining room go still as the guests caught their first sight of me.

I held my position stretched out on the tray, my face bearing the blank, serene expression Statues were trained to maintain at all times... except when it was time not to.

I was borne into the center of the circle of guests, my bearers placing their feet carefully on the tiles. Once I was in full view of everyone, they turned me in a slow circle, displaying the fruit – and me – to the assembled guests.

I heard many swiftly drawn breaths, a few audible groans, and more than a few voices whispering my name -- I was, after all, well-known to the King’s lords. I tried to catch sight of a man who would be grinning in triumph, or perhaps gaping in anticipation, for that would be the winner of the King’s Prize tonight.

The only person who did not react at all was the Lord Scribe, sitting at the King’s right hand. In contrast to the rest of the lords, who were garbed in a few layers of high-quality linen, the Lord Scribe was a shadow of a figure in a dark, hooded robe. I had been serving in the King’s dining room for almost five years now, and not once had I seen his face. From what I heard, no one had.

The servants brought a long, low table into the center of the circle, and I was carefully lowered onto it, facing the King.

His Majesty reclined on a small dais that raised him about a foot above the marble floor. He smiled, looking around. “Where is my winner, this evening?” he asked – though he surely knew; the King was shrewd.

I was in luck – the winner tonight was well-formed and only middle-aged. More often, the winners were fat old men who would never have had a chance with someone like me, had they not won whatever contest the King had set for them earlier in the evening. Sometimes the contest was strength, usually it was knowledge or wits, though sometimes it was luck. Tonight’s contest had surely not been strength, which disappointed me. The winners of those contests were always... gratifying.

“Ah, yes, my Lord Bernon,” the King said. “I believe you have the honors this evening. Please do us the favor of dressing the dessert.”

While I had no real forewarning of what was about to happen, I was as much a regular attendee of these gatherings as the assembled guests. If the dessert was fruit, chances were I was about to get wet.

Sure enough, a servant approached with a flagon of sherry on a silver tray. I didn’t mind sherry so much; I always reminded myself that I could have been the victim of Chef’s experiment with flaming brandy. That poor lad was now a servant in the staging area, where none of the nobility had to look at him.

Lord Bernon took the flagon and uncorked it, then held it aloft for the other guests to see. A muted round of applause and few cheers met this. Then he turned toward me.

The idea was for the sherry to cover the fruit. Most men could manage this. All it took, after all, was a trickle. But, inevitably, the men who won the honor of dressing the dessert took it upon themselves to wet rather more than the food. Though the King had made certain it was considered gauche to wet down a Statue to the point of disarray – I had a sugar coating for a reason, after all – no winner ever passed up the opportunity to sexually stimulate a Statue by whatever means he had available.

It was all part of the game.

This lord did a rather good job of dousing the fruit – a liberal but not uneven pouring down the length of my body. Very little of it ran off, to trickle down my skin and leave runnels in the sugar.

“Where now?” he asked.

Oh, no – I had a crowd-pleaser. They were the worst sort. You see, the winner not only got to pour; he also got to taste.

Of course, the general consensus was for him to pour some into my mouth first, which he did. I carefully tilted my head back as he poured, swallowing what I pleased, and letting the rest run down my chin and neck and onto the linen. When I returned to my perfect posture, he leaned close and gave me a kiss. It wasn’t passionate; no guest – not even a winner – was allowed to deliberately jostle a Statue. Still, he slid his tongue between my berry lips and made a good show of it. I obediently closed my eyes, opened my mouth, and let the sensation wash over me. I enjoyed kissing, anyway, but as a Statue, one learned to appreciate pleasant experiences, no matter the looks of the man giving it to you.

When Lord Bernon stepped away, I left my lips parted and my eyes heavy-lidded for a heartbeat longer – enough to flatter him.

The men cheered as they saw my reaction, and my continued stillness.

“Let’s eat,” said the King, with an impatient wave of his arm.

I was descended upon by fifty men eagerly plucking fruit from my sugared skin. This was, perhaps, the hardest part of the service, for no man failed to pay some sort of attention to the skin he exposed by consuming the fruit. Fingers dragged through the sticky mess of sherry and sugar; tongues swiped my skin; teeth nipped; lips caressed and sucked. The whimpers that escaped me were often of pleasure, sometimes of pain, always of frustration.

The Lord Scribe did not partake of me the way the others did, yet I quivered with anticipation as he drew near. He removed a few bits of fruit, just enough to avoid insulting his royal host, without touching me at all. Only once, just before he withdrew, did he make contact, drawing a single fingertip down the inside of my wrist. I sighed and shivered, and when I opened my eyes, he was gone.

I had never enjoyed any private attentions from the Lord Scribe. As far as any of us knew, he did not entertain Statues, nor did he participate in any of the King’s contests. Those touches – on the inside of my wrist, just beneath my jaw, once on the inside of my thigh – were the most he had ever done. And according to Fernini, that was more than he did to any other Statue. I’d come to anticipate his touch; thought it was always brief, it was pleasurable and terribly teasing. I could have sighed beneath the feather caress of his ink-stained fingers all night.

By the time my body was completely revealed, I had been covered in kisses, licks and even a few bites. My cock had been stroked, my balls fondled, my nipples tweaked and my ass pinched. My throat was dry from gasping.

All in a night’s work. And there was more to come.