Chapter 36 — In which, there are some horrible things out there

*! This chapter and a bit of the next one may need content warning for mentions of 'bodies' and 'slavery'. !*

Seven stared at Alexandrit for a few seconds in complete silence.

His expression was unreadable.

About seven seconds in, Alexandrit started to feel uncomfortable under that intense gaze, but maintained eye contact.

But after another twelve seconds he could no longer take it and slightly turned his head.

Maybe being a slave for so long made him unable to stare into someone's eyes for an extended period of time.

Being a bit flustered with himself, Alexandrit turned towards the forgotten soup and said:

“If that’s all, then eat that soup while it’s still warm. Priest Cotteo said he put a lot of carrots in it, because it’s good for mages.”

“... I don’t know what is more reassuring. The fact that you have completely no idea how to deal with this situation and can’t even hide it properly, or the fact that you guys believe that carrots are good for mages.”

“Are you turning down a good carrot now?”

“... No?”

“Then eat carrots, Mr. Seven. They’re good.”

“... Why are you so worked up about carrots?”

Alexandrit didn’t answer, but prepared a table for Seven to eat.

Seven was fully capable of doing so himself, but Alexandrit was so distracted, he took care of it out of habit.

After confirming that small bowl of rice and sauces were in a straight line, intersecting with the straight line from the spoon, he turned towards Seven, who was observing him with a weird face, and spoke again:

“I confirmed your state for His Excellency, so I’ll be going back now. According to what His Excellency said before, you’re free to join him as he receives reports about some tasks he instructed. You’re also free to stay here. But please remember, His Excellency will be here for a maximum of an hour. If you have any questions for him, be quick.”

And then he left.

*-*-*

Amara accepted melissa tea with a pinch of salt already added.

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“Thank you.”

“It’s our pleasure to serve you, Your Excellency.”

Perlliar smiled, and then they carefully maneuvered between scattered pottery to also hand tea to Phlox and Geod, who changed into new clothes and were curling up under blankets, close to the fireplace.

Amara waited, while Perlliar crouched down to take a close look where exactly the plates are, and then to put small black berry jellies on them.

When Cotteo joined them, the work was already done and Perlliar made the last touches by adding petals of red roses on them.

“Oh~ That’s pretty. Let me distribute them. Your Excellency, do you want your jelly with salt?”

“Yes, please.”

Cotteo quickly handled serving of the jellies to everyone.

Only when the two priests also sat down with their own cups of tea, did Amara asked:

“How is your investigation?”

“We made progress, but…”

The faces of the two priests weren’t so good.

It wasn't an expression of ‘I failed to do my job’, rather it was ‘I discovered something I don’t like’.

“Please speak.”

“Right. As Your Excellency asked, we tracked down missing slaves and observed the border trade.”

“The missing people were indeed connected to the border trade, and some of them were illegally smuggled out as ‘other goods’.”

Slavery in Purplus was a type of government controlled trade.

All slaves were either citizens or war prisoners of Purplus.

In some way, they were the state's property.

Therefore smuggling them outside was illegal and heavily punishable.

For once, it was considered stealing state’s property, for second, not all slaves were ‘eternal slaves’. Most of them in fact were ‘debt slaves’, who could buy out their freedom if they worked enough. Theoretically.

So sending such slaves outside of Purplus was considered kidnapping.

But Purplus’ slaves were highly valued, because of their ‘slave mark’.

Slave mark was a type of spiritual contract, which heavily binds one party.

The exact terms differ from contract to contract, but usually the slave had to strictly follow the owner, was unable to leave on their own and couldn’t raise their hand against their owner.

For attendants working at the Universe Temple, their owner was considered to be Amara, but any person of higher status than a slave working at the temple received the same privileges as Amara, on behalf of being ‘owner’s hand’.

Those slave contracts were created so the person under them could become a perfect servant.

Such a servant was naturally highly sought after, and because slave mark had to be renewed only every few years, as long as there was a person capable of spiritual arts around, there was nothing to worry about.

Because of this, the illegal export of slaves blossomed and was doing good on the borders of Purplus.

But did they just say ‘some of them were illegally smuggled’?

“What happened to the rest that weren’t smuggled out?”

Just in the moment when two priests hesitated, Alexandrit entered and sit down.

The two hosts quickly got up to hand him tea and jelly.

In the half a minute of silence that followed, Seven also appeared and sat down in a shadowed corner.

Cotteo tried to give him tea, but he refused.

Alexandrit frowned when he saw him enter, but didn’t say anything.

Finally, the two priest were sitting in front of Amara again and started to speak:

“Tracking down the missing people's whereabouts, we discovered that most of smuggling happens between country borders. There is almost no living goods trade between Flavun and Rubrun.”

That was strange.

Though Flavun and Rubrun despised the spiritual arts, from the point of view of a merchant it was safer to smuggle people through them first, and only then move slaves outside of the country.

That’s because, as Flavun and Rubrun were part of Luminere, just like Purplus, if a merchant was caught smuggling through their borders, they would suffer lesser punishment.

For that not to happen meant that either Flavun and Rubrun cracked down on the fight against slavery and the advantage of taking a longer route through them disappeared, or there was a better deal out there.

Looking at the two priests’ expressions, it wasn’t the first option.

“What are they trading?”

“Meat, Your Excellency. There is an unusually big export of meat from Purplus. Bigger than our meat production should allow and bigger than Flavun and Rubrun demand should be.”

Amara closed his eyes for a moment.

His back and stomach stung as if they were ripped apart by thousands of blades.