The Fat Concubine Assassin.

Nina’s plan was working perfectly. Step one; infiltrate the lord’s palace – that had been easy. Lord Clarence received regular gifts of concubines from the king, and it had been as simply as disguising herself as one of them. Once inside his palace, step two was even simpler; wait for the perfect moment to strike.
The only slight snag was that ‘simple’ did not necessarily imply ‘timely’. As it turned out, the good Lord Clarence didn’t make much use of his extensive harem of concubines, instead preferring the company of his wife – indeed, Nina had now been waiting for nearly two months without so much as getting the chance to speak two words to him, never mind arranging for them to be alone in a room for the thirty seconds it would take for her to slit his throat.

Well, there were certainly worse places in life to be stuck waiting, Nina considered, casting her eyes around the courtyard from the comfort of her favourite pillowed couch. Her cover would only get stronger with time, after all, and the quarters in which the harem resided were almost excessively comfortable, all plush cushions and couches, silk bed-sheets and endless expensive snacks. For someone used to the meagre lifestyle of a practising ninja-assassin it was almost overwhelming, and for the first couple of weeks she’d resisted the sudden change in lifestyle. She’d eaten only the minimum, taking no enjoyment in the delicious luxury meals she and the other concubines were served, and even done her best to exercise whenever she got a moment alone. After a while though, she’d begun to let her guard down. Being so reluctant to indulge was just making her stand out from the other girls, she justified to herself, and – well, she couldn’t help but admit that having a chance to relax for once was… pleasant. It wasn’t as though she were likely to find herself amid such luxury again, after all; she might as well make good use of it whilst she was there.

And so, she began to get into the habits of idle indulgence. Instead of eating as much as she knew she needed and no more, she started to follow the other concubines’ lead in eating until she was stuffed, gorging on expensive shrimp, creamy soups and roasted joints of meat until she could barely move and her bloated belly swelled out dramatically from her slim frame. Instead of sneaking workouts in the dormitory, she joined the others in lounging on the gold couches around the fountains, nursing a bulging stomach from her last oversized meal even as she accepted yet more snacks from a skinny eunuch’s proffered platter. It was a completely foreign lifestyle to someone so used to scarcity and hardship, but after just two months she was almost getting used to it.

As, she considered anxiously to herself one balmy afternoon, was her body. It should be no surprise that such a drastic lifestyle shift would bring with it some physical changes, but she hadn’t expected them to come so soon. Already her body was noticeably rounder, growing soft all over as cushions of fat blossomed over muscles decaying with disuse. Even when not stuffed with food – an increasingly rare situation these days – her belly bulged eagerly forwards, sagging slightly under its own weight and jiggling with the slightest provocation. On the rare occasions she had to walk, her suddenly-plump thighs nudged together obnoxiously with each step - a feeling so unfamiliar and irritating that she tried to avoid it whenever possible. Her butt, once so firm and flat, was suddenly soft and pillowy, spreading out beneath her like a cushion whenever she sat down. Even her chest, which had remained resolutely quite flat all her life, was suddenly rounded and full, swelling immodestly out against her near-transparent gauze top. She wasn’t used to any part of her body being excessive at all, and the feeling of her belly, her butt, even her thighs and upper arms quivering and jiggling slightly as she moved was a strange and alien one to her.

When she’d arrived, she’d been astonished at how plump the other concubines were. She’d seen fat women before, naturally – usually the wives of wealthy traders or statesmen – but they were generally middle-aged or older, grown heavy from a long, comfortable life of idle motherhood. The girls here though were rarely older than thirty, yet they were almost without exception as stout as any wealthy matron – and most were far, far bigger. When Nina had arrived, she’d been fascinated by the sight of women so huge, so buried in rolls and folds and great, heaving, sagging mounds of fat that they could barely get to their feet on their own, never mind walk. They spent their time in great cushioned litters, fanning their easily-overheated bodies with delicate fans as they stuffed handful after handful of sweet delicacies into their greedy, insatiable mouths. When the time came where they had to be moved, it took a half-dozen strong eunuchs to shoulder each litter and laboriously heave it to wherever it needed to be, the overworked carriers often sweating and puffing almost as much as their overfed burden.
Those girls must have been in the harem for years, Nina had told herself. They must have been taken at only nine or ten years old, and slowly grown this spectacularly huge over the following years. Even back then, though, she’d been forced to wonder – if that were the cases… where were the young girls now?
These days, however, after seeing the damage that only a couple of months had wrought on her body, Nina was increasingly willing to believe that even those hugest of girls had only been there a few years.

In any case, she thought to herself, absently accepting a plate of stuffed hummingbirds from a server as he passed by her couch - it wasn’t as though a little extra weight was the end of the world. It helped reinforce her cover as just another harmless concubine, after all, and she could easily work it all off once she’d successfully assassinated the irritatingly-chaste Lord Clarence. She should be careful of gaining too much, but presuming her chance at her target came fairly soon, a bit of plumpness shouldn’t be much of a problem.



That had been a rather optimistic presumption, as it turned out. As time wore on, Nina continued to only ever get remote glimpses of Lord Clarence, spying him riding with his royal escort from a window or on those rare occasions he visited the harem to invite a particular favourite concubine for a meal in his chambers. At first she’d thought that a euphemism, but from the conversations she overheard it seemed that it was genuinely nothing more than a remarkably modest three-course meal with the lord and his wife. He seemed like such a reasonable, mild-mannered fellow by every account that sometimes she almost forgot that she was only there, sequestered in this lap of indulgent luxury, to get a chance at killing him. Indeed, she often found, as she lounged bloated on one of the gold couches after some spectacularly indulgent meal of lamb or lobster or some other delicacy, chatting idly with the other concubines and with nothing more to look forward to tomorrow than another day of relaxing and stuffing her face, that her mission, her purpose, her entire identity seemed vague and distant. For approaching a year now she’d seen nothing but the harem’s dormitories, courtyard and washrooms, tasted nothing but the most succulent and lavish of foods, felt nothing but the plushest of cushions beneath her ever-expanding rump - and with every passing day the memory of her contract, of the rough straw-filled bag she’d called a bed, of the exhausting regime of daily exercise and weapons practice she’d forced herself through to be the best of the best, all seemed fainter and fainter.

And as those memories diminished, her body grew.
The chubby belly she’d developed during her first couple of months in the harem had melted into a great cushion of quivering fat, folding over itself into two thick rolls of creamy flab that rested comfortably in her lap as she sat, a perpetual warm presence of skin against skin, fat against fat. Even when she was standing – an occasion rarer than ever these days – it sagged under its own weight, jiggling easily with her slightest motion. Thick-padded sides gave the illusion of wide hips leading down into thighs that were blatantly fat, so undeniably full and plump that unless she sat with her legs spread wide apart, they were always in contact with each other. Her face had become rounded and chubby, her jawline softened and her chin enveloped by fat, her whole visage so different that on the occasions she caught sight of herself in the pools and fountains around the courtyard she hardly recognised herself. Even her hair was different, the dark hair she’d always cut short now grown out to be long and flowing, falling like a black waterfall over cream-coloured rocks as it cascaded over her shoulders and chest.
Now there was something that was perhaps even more changed than her face. Where once her chest had been modest and unassuming, now it was as ostentatious and excessive as the harem itself, her breasts swelling out so massively that they almost rested atop the swell of her bloated belly. They weren’t quite that huge yet, but at the current rate they surely would within only a couple more months.

At this point, Nina had to confront the fact that her plan wasn’t working. She probably should have had that realisation long ago, but she’d been blinded by the food and comfort and inane idle company. She could no longer deny though that if things continued as they were, she might not be able to overpower Clarence even if she did get a golden opportunity, never mind make good her escape and lose all this excess weight afterwards. Just that morning she’d found herself exhausted from a simple trip to the washrooms, the muscles of her legs and thighs first burning, then aching from the excessive burden her swollen, overfed body placed on them. Those were the same legs that had let her, only a scant twelve months before, jog for hours at a time, scale walls with ease and even, though it rarely came in handy, perform a standing back flip. Now they were almost useless, what little muscle she actually had left buried in thick sheathes of cushioning flab that pushed up against itself and inhibited her movements all the further.
Her arms were just as bad. Twelve months of lifting nothing heavier than a spoon had left her once-toned arms nigh-useless, crippled by their own flabby, useless bulk. If she didn’t still need them to shovel food into her mouth throughout the day they would likely be rendered entirely vestigial, little more than another couple of places to store the fat that was burying her.

Unfortunately, Nina didn’t really have a plan B. She couldn’t exactly sneak over the rooftops and knife Lord Clarence in his sleep, not in her current state – at this point, she wasn’t even sure if she could escape the harem. The eunuch guards were inattentive, certainly, more concerned with keeping their concubine charges comfortable than preventing any escape, but it wasn’t as though she could squeeze her bulk through the narrow windows anymore, and even if she did, she could hardly blend in with the locals.
There was only one decision to be made, and that was to stay in the harem and hope that a chance at Lord Clarence came soon – and despite herself, despite how much she knew the Nina of a year ago would have despised her current self for what she was doing, she had to admit that making that decision comforted her. No stress, no worry – she just had to keep sitting around, watching and waiting. Her chance would come soon. It had to.


“Good evening. Nina, is it? I was just wondering if you would like to join my wife and me for a meal in our chambers. Nothing fancy, just a roast duck and some dumplings, but it will be prepared by my rather excellent personal chef.”
Nina blinked up at Lord Clarence, her fat hand pausing halfway in transferring a thick wedge of cheese from platter to mouth. She felt completely lost for words, not sure how to react as the kindly old lord smiled down at her.
“Uhh…”
“Excellent, I’ll inform the chef,” he chuckled, “Some of the eunuchs will escort you to my chambers after you’ve had a chance to wash up. I look forward to seeing you then.”
And with that he strolled away, regal cape fluttering as he exited his harem.


Lord Clarence leaned across the table and cut her a slice of roast duck, transferring it onto her plate to join the modest heap of vegetables and dumplings already there. The smell from the flawlessly prepared bird was intoxicating, muddling Nina’s thoughts as she watched him serve.
“There we go,” he announced when he was done, settling back in his chair and smiling first at Nina. “I do hope you enjoy the duck. It’s the chef’s speciality.”
Nina could only nod mutely. She’d been anticipating this day, when she’d be called to take a private meal with Lord Clarence and his wife, for so, so long. Now her chance had finally come.
“Let’s not let it go cold then,” Lady Clarence spoke cheerfully from beside Nina. The two women were sitting next to each other, across the table from Lord Clarence. “Let’s eat!”
And with that she speared a piece of dumpling and began to do just that, tucking into the food.
Nina followed her example, slipping a thick wedge of duck between her lips – and almost groaning aloud as the rich flavour hit her tongue. Perhaps it was just because she’d worked up an appetite from the arduous two-hundred metre walk through to Lord Clarence’s personal quarters from the harem, but she had never eaten anything so delicious in her memory. Even the finely-prepared delicacies she’d become used to eating since she arrived here paled in comparison to this simply roasted duck. She was stuffing another forkful into her mouth almost before she’d swallowed the last, anxious to get another taste as soon as possible; she always ate quickly nowadays, habituated to the practice of stuffing herself, but this was urgent even compared to her normal hasty habits.

The dumplings were just as good as the duck, she discovered promptly, and even the vegetables were incredible. She’d barely eaten anything that could be considered vegetable since she’d come here, the harem treats and meals almost universally meat, sweets or savoury snacks, but here they were divine. She continued to gorge, the drooping flesh of her upper arm jiggling and swaying as her fork worked rabidly to scoop food from plate to mouth as quickly as possible.

“So, Nina,” Lord Clarence spoke presently, and Nina managed to pause in her reckless gluttony to look up at him, wide-eyed, “You must have been here for while now. Is it two years or three, at this point?”
“Um…” Nina hesitated, laden fork drooping in the air half-way to her mouth as she tried to cut through the fog of comfort and luxury to recall how many seasons it had been since she had come to this place. “Yes?”
Lord Clarence laughed loudly, his expression turning doting and fatherly as he looked upon Nina.
“Don’t worry, my dear, it can be hard to keep track of time in the harem. I wouldn’t worry too much about it if I were you. Once you’ve been there for a year, you’ve been there forever, as I’ve heard the eunuchs say.”
Nina nodded, feeling the fat around her throat bunch up into a triple chin as she tilted her head downwards.
“Yes… it does feel like that,” she mumbled. It was as though she’d been in the harem forever, her life on the outside a distant, faded memory. What had she even done before she’d come here? What sort of person had she been? She felt a strange sense that something important had slipped her mind, that she’d forgotten something that had once mattered deeply to her, but her memory was too hazy and confused to grasp it.
“Well, that can sometimes be for the best,” Lord Clarence said, and Lady Clarence nodded sympathetically, “Many of our intake aren’t in the best of circumstances when we take them in. They’ve fallen into bad places, or have found themselves on paths where they themselves commit evil deeds. In my harem though, that’s all behind them. Here, they receive a new body and mind.”

“New body and mind…” Nina echoed. Had she done evil things in the past, before she’d come here? Had she received a new mind? She’d certainly received a new body – the weight of her gut spilling out over her knees, the feeling of her buttocks sagging off her chair on both sides, the fact that her own massive breasts forced her to lean uncomfortably forwards just to be able to see her plate of food on the table were evidence enough of that.

“Exactly,” Lord Clarence agreed, pouring a little extra gravy over his vegetables, “exactly.”

They returned to their food. Though she had been served considerably more than either of her hosts Nina cleared her plate before they were halfway finished, so Lord Clarence served her another oversized portion of everything and enabled her continued gorging. She could feel her stomach straining with the amount of food she’d forced into it, but that sort of discomfort was utterly mundane for her now. Most days she spent almost all her time stuffed, when she first got up in the morning the only time her belly was ever even approaching empty.
She was just tucking into thirds when the door at the end of the dining room slid open, and a young eunuch stepped inside.
“Lady Clarence, your daughter requests you see her in her rooms at once. She’s anxious about the upcoming wedding,” he spoke stiffly.
 “I’ll see what the problem is,” Lady Clarence sighed, leaving her meal unfinished as she got to her feet, “Carry on without me.”
And with that she left the room, the eunuch following, leaving Nina and Lord Clarence alone.

“She’s to be married to a Sarkonian duke in a few weeks time,” Lord Clarence explained wistfully, refilling their wine glasses from the bottle in the centre of the table, “I believe you’re from Sarkonis, are you not?”
“I, um… I think so…” Nina mumbled. She had no idea.
“Well, it’s a beautiful province. I’ve visited many times. The mountain forests are truly gorgeous in the summer, and when it rains…”
Nina’s attention suddenly wavered. He was still speaking, reminiscing gladly about the natural beauty of Sarkonis, but somehow Nina couldn’t take her eyes off his neck. The sun-tanned skin of his throat was bare and unprotected, the skin so thin and vulnerable that she could almost see the rich blood flowing through the arteries beneath. She swallowed with difficulty, captivated by the sight.
“… and the cathedral is simply majestic. It almost rivals the one in the capital…”
Lord Clarence was still speaking, but suddenly something bubbled up inside Nina and she was moving, leaping to her feet – well, as much as any woman her size could leap, anyway. The table jolted as the swollen folds of her belly rammed into it, almost toppling the wine glasses and spilling wax from the candles with the impact. She reached across the table towards the platter of roast duck in the middle of the table, fat little fingers reaching, straining for the carving knife, as all the while Lord Clarence stared with uncertain surprise. Her muscles twitched and burned with the unusual exertion, her enormous, sagging body quivering as she tried to reach the carving knife despite the bulk of her gut preventing her from getting close to the table. Her fingers were only a couple of inches away from the knife, but already her face was red and she was pouring with sweat, her flabby, overindulged body crumbling beneath its own weight. Her fingertips managed to just graze the silver handle but then she was collapsing back into her chair, her entire body quivering and jiggling as she heaved desperately for breath, vision blurring. She had- she had failed…

Suddenly Lord Clarence was at her side, and she felt something cool and metal as he pressed the silver handle of the carving knife into her fat palm.
“Goodness me, Nina, don’t exert yourself! If you need something passed to you, all you need do is ask,” he said, his face a perfect picture of fatherly concern as he gave her the gleaming knife without a second thought, “You could have hurt yourself doing something like that,” he fretted, “What did you even need the carving knife for anyway?”
And Nina stared up at his kindly face, at his bare throat, then at the knife in her right hand, and found that she could not remember.