CHAPTER 86: Where’s Hana?
The sound of receding, hurried steps indicated Lord Berelli’s urgent instruction to call the head of security was clearly understood. He sat back in his seat and admired the scenery from his open window. The panoramic view of Taveil could only be appreciated from on top of the hill in the Berelli manor. The family made sure no other building stood higher than them. Soon however, his thoughts wondered on to the second report regarding the palace’s resource request for a rock outcropping in the middle of Lady Hull’s estate.
A long ongoing tradition with the aristocracy was that all resource requests, regardless of the estate, were widely disseminated to all nobles. The palace considered the transparency as method of ensuring tax was paid by the nobles by encouraging rival nobles to ‘dob in’ other nobles not paying taxes. In Aryonne, landowners paid taxes on the value of the land and not on resources. But that didn’t mean the palace kept a blind eye to what resources lay on what land, and the level of land taxes reflected that. Forestry and gold mining attracted vastly different taxes from the palace.
Consequently, when the king traded visiting rights with the princess in return for mining rights to a seemingly pointless rock outcropping, it spoke volumes to Lord Berelli of the immense value that resource held for the king. It took some cost by Lady Hull to find out who the actual recipient of the resource request was. Leading Lord Berelli to the third report on his table - a request for a woodcutter’s camp. The request coming from the palace-controlled territory west of his was again hardly worthy of his interest were it not for the name Shane Karosaki associated with the two previous reports. Whomever that Shane Karosaki was, he was planning to be a player in the game. He wasn’t from the noble families so did he come from one of the lesser count or viscount families? If the king went to such great lengths to get mining rights for him, then who was that Shane person and where did he suddenly come from?
Whomever he was and whatever his purpose, Lord Berelli recognised ambition when he saw it. In his mind, ambitious people were dangerous, needing a firm hand and clear response. He realised that taking direct response against the camp, which lay in the palace’s domain, could damage the nobles plans for succession by putting too much focus on them. A knock on his door interrupted his thoughts.
“Come in.”
The head of security entered.
“You called me my lord?”
“Are you aware of the contents of these reports?”
It was a purely rhetorical question because the reports arrived by the head of security’s own hand, he knew what lay written in them.
“Yes, my lord.”
“Good. I want to send a message to the instigator of that wood camp not to interfere with my business. Shut down his business by plundering the Old Forest Road where it joins onto the Shimmerstal road. You have my permission to use as many of our troops as needed. I needn’t tell you to keep our interference hidden.”
“Yes sir. I’ll arrange it personally.”
The man bowed while closing the door in front of him.
Back at Antonetta’s house, my attempted removal of Hana’s slave collar proved a resounding success. It happened so quickly it was something of an anti-climax. Getting Hana into my transfer storage was the biggest challenge. At first she seemed eager to do it, then she started looking a bit iffy, and then she simply refused. Eventually we reached a compromise where I let her lie on the bed with her eyes closed and then let the bed fall into the space storage. That way she was mostly at ease. Mostly…
The important thing I should stress was that Hana wouldn’t be aware of anything other than the motion of falling.
It would be the last time I fell for that one.
Now I’d given that topic some thought. The first thing that came to my mind was Asimov’s three robotic laws…well obviously adapted for slaves.
Ara’s sarcasm dripped it was that thick. At least those restrictions were better than a thousand and one rules.
Ara immediately highlighted the gaps in that list of restrictions for me.
Hana would get really upset if she found out I took that long to let her out again, even if it seemed instantaneous to her. I released the bed out of the transfer storage, and it fell with a hard thump on the floorboards. One of the challenges with transfer storage was to leave enough space for the released object to move fully away from the storage’s event horizon, or in other words, the mouth of the storage. It took a lot of ethereal energy to keep the event horizon open and if the energy stopped coming, the transfer storage only transferred the part of the object that made it through. The rest would arrive when there was enough ethereal energy supplied, only thing was, your object arrived in two parts. Not desirable for humans.
In Hana’s case the entire bed needed to fall out of the event horizon which meant if I opened the event horizon only half the bed height from the floor, only half the bed would manage to make it through before the bed legs touched the floorboards keeping the rest of the bed in the transfer storage. Not a situation I wanted to be in because it wasn’t possible to move the transfer storage into a new position once it was open. Unfortunately, it meant a drop for Hana.
With a loud thud her bed hit the ground and she opened her eyes.
“Is it done?”
“Yes.”
Her hand confirmed the collar still remained on her neck. Before she could ask, I answered her question before she asked it.
“I’ve left it on because there might be issues with authorities if they discover we’ve removed it, but I’ve removed the slave function. You can test it out if you want to.”
I quietly watched Hana walk out the door into the darkness. She only returned a while after I fell asleep. When I felt her cuddle up to me, I asked,
“Did you enjoy it?”
“It was nice, but also lonely.”
I hadn’t expected that reply.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
“I’m glad you came back.”
Her hand hit me playfully on the head.
“Baka.”
I probably deserved that.
Before sunrise that next morning Hana and I released Floréal onto the chair in my office. From her perspective the last thing Floréal recalled was falling into the black hole of my transfer storage in her village following her failed attempt to kill me with her pet dathrod. Still miffed about that situation, I had a score to settle with her and her kin but first things first, I mentally decided. Following her return to reality, Floréal went through the expected realm of knee jerk reactions ranging from surprise through to defeat. Fortunately, the slave collar around her neck stopped any attempt of her at retaliation. After three attempts to throttle me resulting in three times of fainting onto the floor, she finally realised that any physical or mental attempt by her to hurt me only resulted in her hitting her head with the floor. Perhaps her headache knocked the haughtiness out of her as she soon grasped the futility of her situation. Our calm d emeanour settled her down, although her defiant eyes said she itched to do otherwise.
“Have you settled down?”
I said to her in fluent elvish. Her eyes opened in surprise. Also, the implications of my understanding elvish and her present situation meant that she was the one taken for a ride and not me. Then she took stock of herself, rubbing her head and noticing her missing arm bracelet.
“Where’s my bracelet?”
For the first time she noticed her missing jewellery.
“I’ve removed that, along with everything you and your people had on them or owned in the village.”
“You’ve captured all my people?”
“Yes. Everything you own, including yourselves, now belong to me.”
“The village?”
I didn’t reply letting her deal with the thought her village no longer remained standing. That would help destroy any thought of returning home.
“What are you planning to do with us?”
“Since I own you and your people, I will assist you to help those you hurt by giving back to our people using your strength in payment for your lives.”
Her hand felt the leather collar around her neck.
“Typical humans to enslave others, I see even your catkin partner is a slave.”
Her eyes fell on Hana. Hana and I started laughing at her misguided thinking.
“Typical of a dark elf to jump to conclusions based on what they see.”
That shut Floréal up. She may have been beautiful to look at, but under that beautiful façade lay a sinister personality living up to the name of dark elf.
“Let me get to the point. Your life as you know it has changed for good. If you try to thwart my authority or think of ways to avoid your situation, I’ll happily return you to the storage and perhaps think of better ways to keep you busy. Think of it this way, my happiness is your only guarantee of a good life.”
I left her to think about that. Later, when she settled down more, I would ask her why she attacked the human villagers in the first place and what she meant when she shouted that her people were being enslaved, although I already suspected what she would say. Camp Endeavour awoke that morning to an interesting spectacle in the open ground next to the children’s playground. One hundred and one dark elves stood there, all sporting new slave collars while looking sorry for themselves like wet cats. Floréal looked particularly unhappy, being dethroned certainly wasn’t in her list of life’s ambitions. Already a throng of spectators stood nearby, watching the show with interest. Sebastien, perplexed at the sudden appearance of the strange group of elves asked me an obvious question.
“Um, Shane, what exactly do you intend doing with all these elves?”
“Seeing that they wanted to be so intimately involved with us, they’re going to be giving you folks a hand with the work around here from now on. Consider them the camp’s permanent residents.”
“Well, there’s certainly enough work in the camp. How are we going to manage them?”
“I’ll allocate a few of them per work team. Don’t be afraid to make them work.”
“You needn’t worry about that. But it’s going to take some effort just to feed, clothe and house them.”
Since most of our tents had already been replaced by small wooden cabins, the folded tents lay stored in the fort. We housed the elves in them and let them instead focus on making their permanent wooden houses first. To introduce them to their new lives I addressed the elves in their own language.
“Floréal has already explained to you why you are here and in this situation. The sooner you accept that, the better for everyone. Some of you have already discovered that you cannot think of escaping, harming yourself or others without collapsing unconscious on the ground. That’s the effect of the slave collar you’re wearing, and some have already discovered that if you try to remove it, the same thing happens. If you continue to behave outside of my expectations, then consider that the humans around you are the only ones that can save you when you fall into water and start drowning or collapse in the forest where there are monsters that would love nothing better than to find an elvish snack lying on the ground. Nobody in this camp will mistreat you. If someone abuses you then report them to your team supervisors. I trust my supervisors, and they are beholden to me. That means their word is my word, and you will listen to them and do what they say. If you still think your treatment is untenable, then you are welcome to go back into the storage you just came from. But I cannot guarantee when or if you will ever come out again.”
They took my threat seriously. No doubt they heard enough depraved human related stories to strike fear into them. After making my three restrictions clear to them and dictating a few necessary smaller ones, I issued the still fuming Floréal their first work instruction.
“No one here is above anyone else. You all report to the supervisor in charge of your group and they will take care of your needs. Your priority is to make permanent accommodation for yourselves. Speak with Sebastien about what you need, and he will accommodate you where he can.”
I left them to get on with their new lives. Elves were understandably good at constructing houses because they had a natural affinity for building with natural resources. A frustrated Sebastien knocked on my office door later that day.
“Those bloody elves are up to no good. They keep insisting they want to make ruddy treehouses in the middle of our camp and won't do anything until they get what they want.”
He looked around. Something about my environment seemed to bother him, but he didn’t say anything.
“How exactly do they want to build treehouses?”
“They want to plant trees and grow them superfast. Do you know how big those trees will eventually become? Why can't they just stick to the ground like everyone else?”
I certainly didn't expect elves and humans to get along like stage actors in a Broadway musical, but it had to be some sort of down-tools record. Heck, work hadn't even started and there was already a go slow. It seemed wearing slave collars didn't stop the elves from exercising interspecies politics. I needed to put my foot down right from the start, but I didn't want to be a dictator. Rather, I smelled an opportunity for both people to win.
“If we allowed them the treehouses, what would you want in return?”
Sebastien was a clever man. He instinctually knew when an opportunity stared him in the face. Clearly one stared him straight into the eyeballs but the cogs in his brain were still completing a few mental turns as he carefully computed my words. He suddenly understood the point of my question.
“I'd say I was particularly interested in how exactly they intended to grow those trees so quickly.”
I couldn't help but grin at our windfall.
“Tell them we'll consider releasing some of the items we claimed from their village if they're willing to trade for it with some relevant knowledge we happen to find useful. I'll give you a list of what I've got of theirs, and you can use that as a bartering tool.”
Following up on that opportunity, I created an inventory written on a parchment in both human and elvish languages to make it easier. Ara was so nice as to also supply a numbered map of the elven village indicating the original placement of all the items we gathered.
“There are quite a few items of their there, so I expect a quite a bit of cooperation from them.”
That parchment turned out to be a stroke of pure genius. In their exiled elvish minds, their homes were no more, lost to the wilderness and wild animals. When they saw the contents of the parchment their stubborn elvish attitudes snapped around smartly, like soldiers in a parade. Each one of them, having shared my transfer storage, knew I wasn't kidding about having their goods in storage.
From then onwards Sebastien discovered few hurdles with the elves who worked like a people possessed. Whatever items he negotiated with them obviously had a lot of emotional attachment for them to be working that hard. Occasionally, one of the elves would pop into the office, point out a piece of furniture or clothing and with distinctly un-elf-like joy, watch me release it to them. Elves held their heritage items in high regard. Furniture tended to be family hand me downs from previous generations and were highly venerated mementos. Apart from the plant materials I sequestered from their stores, I planned on repatriating everything else in my storage.
Sebastien finally figured out what bothered him.
“By the way… where’s Hana?”