“This is the luckiest day of my life.” Saelin thought after he abandoned the carriage in another location and watched the riders storming in the direction of the lower districts. He stood very calmly, nonchalantly, without missing a beat, leaning against a wall outside of a closed shop like he was waiting patiently for it to open. One foot sat on the step and his arms crossed in front of his chest, his head slumped down as if he was bored. But he saw what he needed to see. ‘I don’t know how, but they found her. Maybe they picked up… picked up…’ He struggled to grasp a name that flew just out of reach, he reached instead for the memory of the face. ‘I know you were there… I saw you… I mean you literally told me to… what? What did you tell me to do?’ He swore under his breath as he tried to recall a conversation he knew must have happened.
Instead, he replayed what he’d actually done. ‘Right, I took the girl, that must have been what he hired us for, I hope she’s safe. Borku and Grekin are so… so unrefined about these things.’ He swept his hand briefly through his short dark hair like he was brushing off the thought. ‘Well, so much for that group, if they got… him, or maybe they got Hoadnam… that slimy bastard will sell me out for an off key song. Time to move on.’
When he was sure the path was clear, he glanced up at the sign on the shop, “What luck.” He murmured, the large sign had a large traveling pack on it, along with a sewing needle. And an old man with a key in hand was just approaching the door. He got out of the old man’s way with his usual charming grin, and began small talk as he followed the shopkeep within.
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Priceless awoke to the feel of warmth on her face, and in her hand. ‘Someone is holding my hand.’ She thought, and knew intuitively who it was. ‘Soft. Something soft is under me? The chair? No, I remember, my mistress carried me out of hell… my Kaiji unbound me… did she put me in bed?’ She dismissed the thought, it didn’t feel like a bed.
‘Wait, did I die? Is this heaven, is that why I feel that touch and the sun on my face and softness beneath me? No, no I didn’t die back there. The stars never give heaven to those slaves who betray their owners…’ Priceless slowly began to open her eyes.
Kaiji scrambled up from where she sat at her side and yanked her into a fierce embrace, barely avoiding putting a fresh injury on her companion with the sharp horn on the right side of her head.
“You’re awake! You’re OK!” Kaiji sobbed and held her and repeated herself several times as if she couldn’t believe it.
“How… where… yes, I’m… no, maybe.” Priceless returned the embrace. Savoring the feel of Kaiji’s warmth, her eyes darted about the room, wherever it was, she was not at the hotel.
“Where are we… Kaiji?” Priceless asked, the room was of a dark walnut wood finish, polished smooth on walls and floors and even the ceiling, nearby was a large great glass window that took up almost one entire side, framed by a single enormous and heavy looking deep red curtain. Light filled the room, and showed quite plainly that they were alone. She looked down, she was on an expensive couch, a deep black solid cushion and a single armrest. The back curved up near the armrest and tapered off near the far end. ‘Yes, a lounge, shaped like the vague outline of a woman’s body… like the judge had but… worth more than his house.’
“The estate of our mistress… today was the moving day, we’ve left the hotel. This is… this is our home now, our place. I haven’t seen any of it yet really, I stayed here with you, the mistress let me do that…” Kaiji sniffled and wiped her little nose, then sat back on her heels beside the couch, allowing Priceless to sit up.
“I’m so proud of you… the first one we caught, he told us that you didn’t give them anything, that you stayed loyal to our mistress… I don’t know how you endured it… but I’m so proud… so very proud of you…” Kaiji brought her forehead up to Priceless’s own and pressed it there, her hands held Priceless’s cheeks.
She was about to praise her lover further, when Priceless began to lightly cry. “I tried. I tried, Kaiji. And I did, for… for a little while. I was so scared but… I tried. Then you, I don’t remember, it’s vague, but I remember how it felt. I was afraid for you, more afraid for you than I was for me. I think they must have hit me really hard, I remember the hitting kind of… but when I was scared of what they’d do to you… they broke me. I…” She kissed Kaiji’s cheeks very lightly. “There was, there was a man, I don’t remember what things I told him, but he left, I remember what I said after. I told people things, things about our mistress that they asked till…”
“I’m sorry… Kaiji I’m sorry. I’m going to leave you again so soon… at least I got to say goodbye first… and I know they didn’t get away with what they did…” She kissed Kaiji’s lips tenderly. “I betrayed our mistress… yes, it was to protect you, but I’m a traitorous slave, nobody lets those live… maybe after all the trouble she went through, she’ll just sell me off since I can’t be trusted… but whether she kills me or sells me… this is goodbye.”
Her hold on Kaiji tightened, “I don’t want to go… I don’t want to die… I don’t want to be sold again… I want to stay with you!”
Kaiji’s eyes shut tighter than a miser’s vault and she hugged her Priceless tighter than a miser did his last coin. “Priceless…” She whispered into the little ear into which she’d whispered sweet nothings night after night, when they were alone with the bed of their absent, terrifying mistress and it was only themselves.
“I don’t want another name! I like this one! I didn’t want to talk! Now I won’t go to heaven, I won’t even see you after we die! I’m sorry… I destroyed us… I destroyed us… I…” Priceless dug her nails into Kaiji’s back and buried her face in the crook of Kaiji’s neck.
“Then… why were they beating you.. Why were they hitting you if…?” Kaiji’s mind was a tumult, a whirlwind of distress and incomprehension as if she understood, but could not believe she understood what she did.
“I stopped. I remember outside, someone, they said Mistress had come back, I knew you were safe. I stopped talking because you were safe, nobody could get through her to you. S-So I stopped talking, and then… the hitting…” She sniffled a little and kissed Kaiji’s dark skin and brought her hands up to take Kaiji by the horns, she drew her face back and met her eye to eye. “Wait, you used magic, didn’t you… how… I thought your collar…”
Kaiji raised her chin to show it off more clearly. “Remember the gift the guilds left… this one doesn’t suppress my magic, it enhances it. I am a weapon of our mistress, trusted to wield my every skill absolutely in her service.”
Priceless blinked her eyes slowly, forcing away tears, her lips formed into a faint, shaky smile and her hands came down to touch Kaiji’s shoulders. “A purple tag too… you are her voice, her will, her weapon. It’s as close to free as you can be. I’m so… happy for you. If she only sells me, knowing you’re doing well, will be a comfort, and my favorite name will be remembered happily somewhere.”
“There’s a tag for you too… I saw it with my own eyes.” Kaiji said as she drew her face close and took Priceless’s hands together in her own, holding them like a bridge between them.
Her companion’s eyes drooped, “I won’t get one. Like I said, I’m a traitor, I betrayed my mistress over a slave’s life, who would give me a tag after that? I’m a liability…”
“I believe I will be the judge of who is a liability, and who is not.” Nua answered as she entered the arched high double door. She marched over the distance between them with her hands swaying easily at her side, and before they knew it, she was standing beside where Kaiji crouched and Priceless sat.
Priceless tried to fling herself from the couch to the floor, only to stop in midmotion when Nua snapped out, “Wait.”
It was a quiet word which was like the thunder from the storm that hid her in her captivity.
Nua’s hands folded behind the small of her back. Her shoulders squared and her eyes downcast.
Priceless’s lips trembled with the urge to speak.
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“First, are you alright, slave?” Nua asked in a crisp and imperious voice. “You went through a great deal, the last time I saw someone pummeled that hard, I was doing the pummelling and they were on the wrong end of a sword.”
“I, yes mistress, I’m alright now. Whatever you did while I was asleep, I am healed. Th-Thank you. I never… I mean, I said to them that you’d come… that you’d save me, not forget me.”
“And you were right.” Nua answered, allowing the slow movement of Kaiji as she brought herself prostrate with hands out and palms down to the floor, to go unremarked upon.
“Part of me though… I thought it was a wild hope, after all, you got me for nothing…” Priceless whispered the last word out only just barely managing to finish it, and could not meet the eyes that stared through her soul.
Nua reached out and took Priceless’s chin between her thumb and forefinger and brought her head up. ‘Not all worth is coin.’ The phrase sprang to mind, ‘You have more value than your sale price…’ Another sprang up, and Nua discarded them both. ‘She won’t understand that. Not yet.’ Nua stared down in the wide brown eyes that looked up at her with utter reverence and awe, her pupils shaking and lids fluttering. “Some things, slave, Priceless, are worth more than any coin, and are worth killing for. They took what belonged to me, and that could not be allowed to happen. Do you understand me?” Nua asked the question, but she knew before it even hit Priceless’s ear, that the double meaning was lost on the lifelong slave.
“Yes… mistress. I belong to you.” Priceless replied, and she took the right hand that held her chin, cupping the wrist and back of the giving hand in hers, she kissed Nua’s palm. “That is why I have to confess my treason…”
Her mistress stood silent, looming over her, and though Priceless felt the judging eye of the stars on her, not a crime of hers was skipped but what she couldn’t recall.
When she was done speaking, her eyes were dried to the point of redness, and she shut them tight enough to feel the ache. “I’m sorry… mistress. I’m sorry for my betrayal, my treason… I tried to be good, tried not to talk. But I couldn’t take that. Not that… please… please don’t kill me. But if you do… can it be quick… I’m scared of pain…” Her little body had already begun to shake again under the bright blue eyes that might as well have been big as the sky over her.
“You poor little thing.” Nua muttered softly and her hand went through Priceless’s soft brown hair, running it through her hands. “If you’d betrayed me for coin, if you betrayed me for pleasure, if you betrayed me out of greed, if you betrayed me out of lust, or… if you had simply run away…” Nua let the statement hang in the air, the breath of her mistress over her, kissed her skin.
Priceless recalled the temple that owned her briefly, the feel of death in the air when she put a body into a mausoleum, and her owner’s breath felt the same.
“But you didn’t. You acted out of loyalty to someone dear to you. That is virtue, greater love hath no man, that he lay down his life for his friends. That is the wisdom of my faith. You epitomized that in what you did. Look up at me, slave.” Nua gave the order bluntly after speaking softly, when Priceless obeyed, her face froze.
Nua bowed her head to her. “Well done. I acknowledge the will in your choice. But!” She stopped the sentence at a single word after snapping it out sharply, and straightened her head up.
“You were loyal to someone else, more than you were to me. And that ‘is’ a problem.” Nua withdrew her hand and folded it behind her back.
Kaiji put her lips over her owner’s boot, “I took her loyalty from you, if she didn’t love me… this wouldn’t have happened… if someone must be punished… please don’t hurt her… she’s been through too much…”
“I’m not going to kill her, and I’m not going to beat her. You can force someone to obey with violence, but that isn’t loyalty. If ever I raise a hand or whip to you, it will be for correction, not some petty retribution… what a weak owner it is who has to beat fear into their slaves and pretend that is loyalty.” Nua bit the words off with disgust, revealing more of her mind, “Besides, when the fear for you was gone, her loyalty was absolute. It would be a waste, and a pointless cruelty, to send her away after that.”
“Still… I can’t have that go unpunished either.” Nua looked out the window of her estate and brought her left hand up and tapped her cheek in thought. “What do I do with you, slave?”
“Please… please… please…” Priceless whimpered, not even knowing what she was pleading for as she matched her companion’s prostrate posture.
“Advisor, I need your guidance. How important is status in Pas’en? For everyone? Slaves included?” Nua asked with a faint downward glance at the top of the dark haired slave’s head.
“Paramount, mistress! That is what makes your ownership of Sado such a wonder, and why owning me… seeing me serve you in the bath, and attend you as the goddess you are, is so vital! A purple tag on bronze is like the presence of a royal, and a leather clad one… lives in dread. The pecking order of power touches every level of society in Pas’en, even among those who are tools that work!” Kaiji gave the explanation by rote, but underlying it was an uncertain fear of what her words would mean for her companion.
‘She won’t hurt her. She’ll find a way to make it right… to do what she has to do, without hurting her…’ Kaiji raised her eyes and stared adoringly up, her companion, out of the corner of her eye, was full of the same awe, but also something more. Fear? Anticipation? The question haunted her as they awaited judgement.
Nua’s heart ached for the little brown haired woman whose loyalty was betrayal, and betrayal, loyalty. But she covered her aching heart of pity with a face of flint.
“I see. Priceless, you were bought for nothing, and so I’m going to give you away for nothing.” Nua made the pronouncement like a clap of doom, and through both slaves’ heads, all manner of horrible fates passed.
Her hand extended, so that her forefinger loomed a few feet above her. “I’m giving you to Kaiji. You belong to her. I can think of nothing in a pecking order of slaves that might be lower, than being the possession of a possession. As long as she is mine, no one will ever take you away from her. She is responsible for you, and all that you do. If your highest loyalty is to her, and not to me, then let your service to me, pass through her. If I die, she will inherit you. You will have no quarters of your own, as the others do, but will live with her.”
Their minds whirled with the unthinkable words. The impossible ‘punishment’.
Kaiji was the first to break silence, “Mistress Aiwenor, no such thing exists within Pasenian law. Slaves cannot marry, or own property of any kind. Even our children are not our own, though they are protected from sale until weaned…”
“Name the estates of Duchessa Aiwenor.” Nua gave the clipped, formal order, cutting off Kaiji’s explanation, then returning her hand to behind her back.
“Fourteen villages of fifty to hundred families, one on the cusp of township at three hundred families, and one walled town of one thousand families.” Kaiji responded reflexively.
“Total slave population?” Nua demanded with the same crispness.
“Without checking the records I requisitioned before your return, Mistress, population ranges from five percent to fifteen percent, however they are not part of the citizen census.” Kaiji’s clipped answer matched the tone of her mistress, and an anxious Priceless watched out of the corner of her eye.
“As a Duchessa, it is my right to add to Pasenian law within my demesne, as long as I do not take away from city authority, isn’t that right?” Nua’s question was pointed, and a slow smile spread over Kaiji’s face as she began to understand.
“It is as you say…” Kaiji acknowledged the words with great hesitation, as if unwilling to accept their reality.
“Then this is the first of the laws of my estate. One may be bonded to another, and such binding cannot be undone for purposes of profit or punishment. Also… only till weaning… no, that is unacceptable.” Nua’s foot tapped. ‘If I forbid the sale of children on my lands entirely, I will rile up the nobles’ memories of Sado, and that won’t do.’
Barely a moment’s thought was all it took before Nua came to an answer. “Write that no child may be sold until they have reached the age of ten. And impose a twenty percent sales tax to the benefit of my estate that declines at a rate of two percent per year until adulthood. I won’t have my lands emptied of future labor for short term profits. Come to me with details later, but for now, take my ‘disloyal’ possession, your loyal possession, and go. You have… oh say two hours before you join me in my office.”
“Of course, mistress!” Kaiji exclaimed excitedly, Priceless’s hand was already entwining into that of her lover.
“Be prompt,” Nua added, raising a finger and wagging it toward them, “I need to coordinate with the Prince for the ceremony marking my status officially. I need to host a ball for the guild masters, merchants, and nobles. I also need to meet with the bank and establish the terms under which I and my soldiers will do business with them. I also need to tour my lands, and there’s still the matter of the hidden hand behind Priceless’s taking, and the missing man who must have taken the carriage away. Not to mention ensuring the training by the headman ranked adventurers Lymestra and Orcis, and I need to send you out to buy Vargas’s wife and… Freyjin’s daughter. And I’ll be sending you to the market for both slaves and goods for my estate here and manor in my town. We have a great deal of work to do, slaves, and I will not waste a moment!”
“I will do as you command at once, mistress.” Kaiji replied with a broad enthusiasm spreading over her face.
Priceless, slowly understanding what was said, praised her owner in the quietness of her mind, and as she did, she went from prostrate to up on her knees, not releasing her hand from that of Kaiji. “Mistress Aiwenor… before today, I feared you, more than I loved you. Now… I love you, more than I fear you…”
“She is a goddess, that is how it should be. I prayed for you to be returned, I prayed for your salvation… and here you are.” Kaiji darted out her left hand and took Priceless’s right. “Here you are…” She repeated.
Nua patted their heads kindly, “One hour fifty-nine minutes.” She said with a smirk forming at the left side of her lips.
The two scrambled to their feet, “Your quarters Kaiji, are on the third floor, fifteenth door on the left. Oh and… clean up before coming to me… both of you.”
She crinkled her nose a bit, and they laughed before fleeing from the room.
“That worked out well.” Nua mused aloud when she was alone. “I just legalized marriage for slaves in a way that shouldn’t disrupt things with the nobility... too much at least, as it’s on my own estates, returned my property to myself, and now… time for just a little bit of justice.” She looked out the window where the orc was being staked out. “A fine example he will be.” Nua remarked casually and took out her precious knife. ‘Yersin, I have a gift of death for you today, but, I hope you don’t mind if I take my time with it a little, it won’t be that long, we might see… damn, I don’t recall the name. Wait, what did his face look like…’ Nua asked herself, and cursed her shoddy memory. ‘It was so busy I suppose I’ve forgotten.’
‘Strange… I… don’t think I got a good look at him either, I must not have, because nothing about him stands out. His face had… features… that isn’t very helpful. Damn. Well I can’t remember every peasant to come by. Not to worry.’ Yersin said amicably, ‘Take your time about this one, I love the way you work. It adds good flavor.’
‘I’ll take your word on that, Yersin, I’ll take your word on that.’ Nua said with a laugh as she headed toward the door, to join the company of those securing the screaming, furious orc, and teach him how to really, truly scream.