Kaiji looked at Freyjin in silence, part of her pitied the blonde elven woman, a mother of one who had become mother to three, and two of which still were possessions. She closed her blood red eyes, ‘To always fear they will be taken away… how would I feel if the Mistress wished to sell Priceless?’ And yet clear as it was to her, the Majordomo’s heart was not so full of pity that it moved.
“If your loyalty to her does not waver, well… you know her laws, you saw them when I wrote them for her, at her command.” Kaiji recounted, “Freyjin… I do understand how you feel about our mistress, I won’t deny it when I felt it myself. The hours I lay prostrate with a whip in front of me, waiting for her to return and punish me, I will never forget a minute of it. But you have only to serve truly, and you have nothing to fear, I promise you. She knows our pain most intimately. That is part of what makes her the goddess that she is, and why it is blasphemy to do anything but obey and serve loyally.” Her empathy molded into a resolve of iron, her eyes opened again to hold those of the wavering Freyjin.
“You know the truth… don’t you…?” Freyjin asked, her hand coming up to cover her parted lips.
Kaiji let the question hang in turn for a full minute before she acknowledged it, “I do. I kissed her scars, and love her for them… she showed them to you?”
“The day she beat me to a pulp, before she made me fight to keep Lenah and Straen… after she ground me into the dirt… she helped me up, she gave me what I wanted.” Freyjin hung her head and closed her hands in front of her waist. “I have them because of her… I know what I am saying… wanting to go… I understand… but they’re mine now and having lost my Veema once, even the possibility of it again?” She shook her head and then brought her wrist up and rubbed away her tears.
Kaiji felt pride swell in her breast for the power of her mistress, and a welling of affection like a fresh spring in the wild. “Freyjin… she gave you what you earned by your willingness to defend them. That’s the lesson, she wants you to want what you do… to protect what you love. She entrusted you with intimate knowledge of herself so that you could rise. Her hand may hold the power of life and death, but she wants you to rise, ‘us’ to rise. Have faith in her…”
The way Kaiji spoke triggered something in Freyjin, just as it had when Kaiji mentioned the mistress knowing their pain. “You’ve abandoned the stars… haven’t you… any Starwatcher would have said to have faith in the stars or talked of accepting our fate and our place…. You’re an apostate… aren’t you Kaiji?”
Kaiji clenched her jaw, “What if I am? What if I am not being hyperbolic about calling her a goddess? What did the stars do for us, that I should have faith in them? What did they do for you?! Took your daughter and let her scrub someone’s floors?! She had a bruise when she was brought here, someone hit her, what did the stars do?!” Kaiji hissed the words out like an angry cat. “In the kitchens of this estate, there are none but Komestrans our mistress has saved. You know her rules! Where are the overseers you manage?!” Kaiji did not exclaim anything as much as she hissed it in a demand.
Freyjin bowed her head in humility. “She has no need of them… they trust her… and yes… I… I trust her too.”
“Rightly so.” Kaiji stood up and leaned forward, resting her hands on the desk. “Fuck the stars and their fates. My goddess has proven to us both that fate is a lie used to keep the defeated broken.” Kaiji ground her teeth as memory after memory of the fall of her world ran past, memories not dissimilar to those of the Steward in front of her, that much she was sure of.
“She fought back and became my goddess, I will help her rise higher and higher, and you will do the same, her success is the bright future you hope for, for yourself and your children. There is no other path for us. If you left tomorrow, what would you, Lenah, Straen, and Veema do? No money, not even the clothing, that belongs to your mistress. Our people are cheap except for specialists whose prices our mistress has driven up, so nobody wants to pay for labor. You’ll sell yourselves into collars again in a month just for food.” Kaiji’s blunt assessment was humbly received.
Freyjin’s head could not have hung lower. “Forgive my…” She was about to say ‘implied disloyalty’ when to her surprise, Kaiji finished it for her.
“Blasphemy. Yes, I do.” Kaiji’s voice, first cold, became softer, “I struggled once as you do now… terrified of her, but coming to respect her diligence, her hard work, her sense of fairness… her… her mercy. You know how it is now… I love her. I proudly kiss her scars or her feet, and bend my body and spirit to her service… she is my goddess… and so she will be to you also.”
Freyjin blinked at the assertion of the demon-elf, “I… that is a bold statement… I can promise my loyalty for what she’s done… my respect for those qualities… but love her?”
Kaiji nodded emphatically. “I was once a lady on high, one of the most powerful women in the great cities, a teacher of Princes. I had more power and freedom than you ever did, more than almost any but the Princes of the great cities themselves. Offer me that again, or offer me a place at her feet, and I would lock this on myself.” Kaiji spoke with conviction, and yanked at the bronze collar on her throat. “When you recognize as I have, how far she will go, how far she intends to take us… you will kneel, call her goddess, and mean it.”
It was difficult for Freyjin to grasp what Kaiji meant, and at that moment, she had other concerns, and so she shifted the subject. “Ahem… well, regardless of the future, right now I need money, we should have enough specialists and supplies ordered to handle some construction. There’s only one problem ahead that I can see.”
“What might that be?” Kaiji asked as she seated herself formally again.
“Food. The mistress is essentially buying a city of slaves. Feeding everybody will be difficult.” Freyjin said unhappily. As if to emphasize her point her stomach rumbled slightly, bringing a forgiving smile to Kaiji’s face.
“Skipped eating, did we?” Kaiji asked, bemused.
Freyjin blushed, the rosy tint lit up her face, “Sorry, not, well not entirely. But it wasn’t much, I was in a hurry you see…”
Kaiji waved it away, “Grab something from the kitchens before you go. Eat on the way to keep your strength up.” She winked at the woman and gestured the Steward over to her desk. Freyjin approached, curious, and leaned forward to look where Kaiji pointed.
The demon-elf slid open a drawer, and there it was, a small basket of breads and some wrapped slices of meat. “We’ve all got to eat. And on that subject, when I understood part of the intentions of my goddess, with her guidance, I bought futures. I bought tremendous amounts of grain from the other great cities and some of the smaller ones, when the harvest comes, the grain and rice and countless young heads of cattle will come with them. Some cities will suffer a great deal as a result.” Kaiji’s demonic heritage was manifested before Freyjin’s eyes just then, as the demon-elf’s smile became savage, even cruel.
Her fingers curled beneath her palms when they came back to the desk after the drawer shut, “You see, not every city places restrictions on how much merchants can sell. Why would they? Rainfall, being what it is, and the rivers, and everything… well, famine isn’t common. When the time comes, Komestrans will feast in the collars of my… our goddess… and the free cities who overthrew us all, will crawl on their bellies to kiss her feet and call her mistress, as long as she feeds their children.”
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“You have a vengeful streak… don’t you?” Freyjin asked with a wary look that had her step back a pace.
“I always did. I may have forgiven Prince Rasgen, who tried to stop things at least, but the allied smaller cities that abandoned us or switched sides? Or the other five cities? No. Never.” Kaiji said through gritted teeth, “How many of the women of our city were pregnant when you bought them?”
“A lot.” Freyjin acknowledged. “You don’t have to explain it to me, I know I was lucky. But the mistress intends to create a famine?”
“To create security. They can’t march on empty bellies, that buys her time, time to build our city, time to build our defenses. Komestra will rise again… Freyjin. You heard her yourself at the great assembly.” Kaiji’s voice became hungry, ravenous, her fists clenched so tightly that her arms shook, “We’re getting it all back, everything. So what if a thousand starve in Kai’sen?! Let them know the hunger of Komestra before our walls fell while they feasted outside! Let them come and sell us back our people for a loaf of bread or a haunch of dog meat. They may buy it from elsewhere, but it will be expensive, and not all Princes are wise. The next year will bring… glorious chaos. Suffice it to say, food is not a problem… for us.” Kaiji laughed a savage, brutal laugh, and then scribbled a note.
“Make it a larger buy today, and have supplies for construction sent out to the villages. Priceless and I will be conducting a tour of our goddess’s lands. So you’ll be in charge for the next few days while we’re away… but run everything by Lady Solution ‘just in case’. Alright?”
Freyjin took the note as soon as Kaiji affixed a seal to it. It was authorization for regular withdrawals from the bank of Pas’en, along with a date range. “Alright, Voice of the Mistress.” Freyjin said without looking up from the document. “I’ll have construction started on the nearest places before you make it back, so just return the same way you left.”
“You work fast.” Kaiji said with a sincere, respectful look on her now tranquil face.
“Always did.” Freyjin said, then winked, turned, and left the room.
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The pandaman looked at the document full of supplicating words and then at the insulting elf that handed it to him. He looked down at it again, then back at her. The Prince’s submission and her contempt were at such odds that he could barely process his sense of dismay. “You bear submission in your hand, and contempt on your lips… you carry a tribute to be consumed by our emperor and his sons, but threaten the life of his guards… did the Prince send someone insane to us?”
Nua laughed, “Not at all. It’s just that it doesn’t matter, because I am not from Pas’en. As I said, I come from an Empire far to the west of you, beyond the Devor border, I am a mercenary hired for this task, and mercenaries are only required to respect the ones that pay them. You want respect, give me gold. Otherwise…?” Nua tapped her knife, “you’re either going to let me do my job or we have a fight about it. You’re not a god, you’re just a guard, and right now, ‘guard’, you are slowing down the delivery of tribute to your emperor. How long do you think you’ll last if he learns you held us up?”
The pandaman heard every word, outrage arose, but when the wrath of the god-emperor was brought up… the word of the delay in delivery of the tribute? Nua felt sure that if he could sweat, he would have then.
“Maybe you could deliver her without me. Maybe she dies along the way when one of your other idiots gets too hungry, maybe an accident happens, maybe he’s annoyed because you ate half his meal because he wanted to eat the escort too?” Nua gave a grim laugh and stared hard at him with her glowing golden eyes, “Maybe he holds you to blame for any of that… if you really want to commit suicide, there are ways to do it without so much walking.”
“Awfully confident for a walking stew.” The pandaman groused, his head already filling with dreadful possibilities if something should go wrong along the way.
Nua shrugged, “Escorts get eaten sometimes, but not here. Do you think I’m stupid? We’re dressed to visit your emperor, we passed beneath the yoke, you can bluster all day, but we both know how this goes. If I’m to die, it won’t be here. If you try to change that, well, protecting my charge from stupidity is part of my job.” Nua didn’t break eye contact, and her evident knowledge of how things worked, set the pandaman commander to sudden slumping.
“You’re no fun.” The Pandaman commander finally muttered, “Keep to the road, you’ll reach the next waypoint. They will expect you by sunset on the third day. Do not make them look for you.”
He turned to one of the other bearmen, “Light the signal fire!”
Nua was nonplussed by any of it until the mention of the signal fire. ‘So they have a non-magical system of long range communication… at least for simple messages.’ She quietly internalized the tidbit.
Nua turned her horse away from the beastman and followed the path around the building, sticking to the road, they left the guards behind. She glanced over her shoulder, atop the building, smoke rose high into the sky.
When they were well down the open road, Sobella finally spoke, though she still clung as tightly as she could to her escort, her voice at least, did not betray fear, only relief. “How did you know? How did you know they weren’t going to eat you after you insulted them like that?”
Nua smiled sweetly, though she didn’t look behind her to reveal the smile, it came out in her words. “Because, Sobella, they are at heart, cowards. Not all, certainly, but their fear of their emperor is the basis for their loyalty. They believe him to be divine in some way. They fear his wrath, and so they fear failure that might bring it down on them. If you die along the way with me, it’s my fault, not theirs. If you died along the way with them, it’s their fault. When fear is the only basis for loyalty, learning from mistakes is secondary to covering them up. They don’t ‘grow’.”
Sobella thought that through, “But feared princes have safe cities.”
“Maybe, but fear is just a tool. My slaves are terrified of me because I can rob them of life with a touch, because I am an unknown element, because they have seen my brutal retribution. But I also worked to win their loyalty. You were at court when Kaiji visited, what did she say of me?”
Sobella thought that through and gave a very slow nod of understanding. “I see, yes, she works hard for you, for her own reasons.”
“Right, willing obedience beats forced obedience. When fear is your only tool, what can you do when that tool breaks?” Nua asked formally, leaving Sobella in silence for a time until she turned to another question.
“You talk like this was a school lesson being recited?” Sobella asked the question awkwardly.
“Is that actually a question?” Nua asked in turn, then chuckled and shook her head, “Never mind, yes, it was. Rhetoric was part of my training as a priestess in the empire I made my home. We learned to think of the why and the how as much as the what. Questions like that were routine. My divine master’s will was that those who were called to the highest service should be well educated. I was taught to use fear, but also to win hearts, to be able to be diplomatic, to negotiate, but also when and how to fight. I used terror at first with my slaves, then won them over by giving them my loyalty first. A gesture of my justice…” Nua hung her head as shame washed over her, recalling the quivering Priceless begging not to be hurt on the day they met.
The sense vanished almost immediately and her head rose again as she recalled her Kaiji. ‘I am not wrong. This is how things ‘are’. I do what I must, until I can do what I want.’ She told herself, while in the quiet recesses of her mind a little voice said to her, ‘You can’t let them go, they’re better off with you.’
She barely heard the inner voice, and turned her mind to other matters. “What are we going to face next?” She asked, distracting herself from unpleasant thoughts.
“The market.” Sobella whimpered and put her forehead to the back of Nua’s neck. “I can never… my death is bad enough, but I can never make up for the fact that we put you through this, and that is almost as bad.”
“It’s just a market.” Nua shrugged.
“No… no it isn’t. It is widely accepted that fear flavors meat, so they want me to feel as frightened as possible, and you also. When we reach there, we will pass, if the stories are true, through the meat market.” Sobella replied somberly her clinging arms were not especially strong, and yet it was all the strength she had, that much Nua was sure of.
“I understand. Let me guess, they’ll have a feast ‘celebrating’ our arrival?” Nua put the question forth with venom on her tongue, and Sobella whispered out a very small…
“Yes. Each of the stops will force me to experience one sense of my fate, until we reach the capital. This one will be ‘smell’. If I try to flee, it is your job to stop me, no matter what you have to do… I am in your care, as an escort, and as a prisoner, and as a companion… if my courage fails, yours mustn’t.” Sobella explained.
“Has it happened?” Nua asked her passively.
“Yes, there have been tributes who tried to run. Escorts take them down and drag them back. I will try not to, but I’m just an ordinary demon-elf. I’m already terrified. I don’t know how much I can bear…” Nua felt the shaking start, and tactfully chose to change the subject.
“Tell me something… how is it that Rasgen ended up setting you free?” Nua asked, and she could already feel the quickening heart and the slight, slowly turning of Sobella’s mood to a more pleasant matter.
Out in front of them, the wide open lands and great high mountains loomed endlessly, grass grew on either side of the dirt road, in all respects, it seemed quite ordinary but for one thing. One thing Nua couldn’t quite place. Though she savored the feel of the sun warming her, the feel of her hair billowing as it caught the wind, and even the feel of her now relaxed companion holding from behind, something was amiss. Something she couldn’t place for two straight days.
It finally hit her on the morning of the third day in the great wide empty.
“Sobella…” Nua asked as she helped the demon-elf on the horse again, “where is everybody?” ‘That’s it…’ Nua thought with dismay, ‘we haven’t seen even one traveler of any race for two straight days, for a bustling empire, you’d think we’d see at least one or two… but… nothing? It’s like we’re alone here.’