Agent of Cern, Chapter Two

As we were eating breakfast, Luce asked “Master, may I answer you questions?”

“My questions?” I asked. Despite my anti-hangover, this caught me off-guard. Now that I could no longer ‘hear’ Luce with my Master’s ear, I felt guilty again about keeping her as my slave. I told myself that I had to keep playing the part of the kindly slavemaster, until I could free her without making things worse for her.

“It’s obvious, master,” Luce said. “You’ve opened your mouth four times now to ask questions, and then shut it again because you didn’t know how to phrase them. I mean, it’s obvious to any slavegirl,” she answered my unspoken protest, “not necessarily to another man.”

I shook my head, remembering Belzac’s warning last night about slavegirls being smarter than their masters. Luce was right: I did have questions. “All right,” I said, “go ahead and answer my questions.”

Luce started answering my questions before I had a chance to ask them. She told me about the building we were in: Belzac’s hôtel. Most Cernians live in hôtels, a sort of luxury dormitory that combine private rooms and suites with a common kitchen, library, various workshops, laboratories, and other rooms. Belzac’s hôtel had a number of couples in residence - masters and their slavegirls - as well as several students newly arrived from the communes. As an alchemical adept, Belzac taught a basic class in practical alchemy once or twice each year to these newcomers.

I wanted to look at an atlas, so we adjourned to the library. We were reading together when a female voice spoke at my elbow: “My lord? I’m Belzac’s Orane, and I have a message for you from my master.”

I looked up. Orane had long blond hair, bright blue eyes, and the delicate features of a storybook princess. “Please have a seat,” I said. I felt an archaic chivalric impulse to stand for her, but something told me that this would be un-Cernian. She wore a collar locked on her neck, and a sleeveless slave-tunic similar to Luce’s but more elegant. Also like Luce, she went barefoot. She was a slavegirl, like all Cernian females. “I don’t think you’ve met,” I went on after she sat down, “but this is my Luce.”

“We’ve met, master,” Luce said. “Orane came to visit last night while you talked with lord Belzac. Isn’t it obvious? How else would I have known so much about the hôtel this morning?”

I snorted at her sauciness and she grinned. I turned to Orane. “You said you had a message for me?”

“Yes my lord. My master Belzac would be pleased if you attended his course on practical alchemy. The first lecture is this morning, in half an hour.”

“Certainly,” I said.

“Also, my master ordered me to help you and your Luce with your wardrobe.”

“Thank you.” I said. I only had the one set of casual clothes from the Black Druid’s lab, and Luce had only a borrowed slave-tunic that didn’t quite fit her. “Um.” I felt myself floundering. Belzac had mentioned something last night about Leschmits Guide, the standard Cernian handbook on slavegirls, and I felt the need for my own copy. Despite my anti-hangover, or perhaps because of it, I found ordering slavegirls around harder than I expected. “Luce, you and Orane can talk about clothing while I’m at the lecture,” I managed at last.

“Yes master.”

My anti-hangover gave me more help at Belzac del Boise’s first lecture on practical alchemy. I usually don’t get much out of lectures; I prefer to read for information. But this time I could absorb more than was usual for me.

Belzac had seven students - or eight, counting myself. The others were young men recently come from various communes, attending the course to learn certain alchemical basics that the communes couldn’t teach. Two of them had been Belzac’s associates in his raid on the Black Druid’s lab, and still wore the blue-and-tan uniform of the “Watchguard,” a sort of militia or police force.

I arrived at the lecture room after the other students but before Belzac. The others looked at me, and then began whispering among themselves. With my new body’s sharp hearing I could make out that rumors were flying in unusual numbers. The two uniformed students - Edmond and Guilliam their names were - seemed to be filling in the others.

Belzac entered and the whispering stopped. “Before I begin this morning,” Belzac said, “I would like to introduce a new student: John-Smith.” He ran my name together, not quite making it a single word ‘Johnsmith’ but pronouncing it so that one could hear the hyphen. I decided I liked it that way. “I hope you will make him welcome to the group.” Seven unfriendly faces turned to inspect me, and I returned their looks with as much nonchalance as I could muster. Seven faces turned back to Belzac, almost in unison. He frowned at them, then glanced at me. I gave him a small shrug of my shoulders. “Well then,” he said. “This morning’s lecture is on simple distillation...”

I listened carefully, made an occasional note, and copied the sketches that Belzac drew on the chalkboard. Fortunately, this lecture covered technique more than theory. Technique I felt I could handle, but the alchemical theory of my new home-world would take some getting used to. Still the little bit of theory Belzac touched on made a weird kind of sense. It wasn’t the chemistry I knew, but I could see some interesting parallels. I’d want to study some alchemical textbooks as soon as I had a chance.

The lecture ended with Belzac handing out student stipends for the week and reminding us to meet for lab in two hours. I made some mental calculations: Trion had 11-day weeks, and 20 hour days, but the day was just as long as on Earth, as nearly as I could tell. The longer week meant that the stipend would have to stretch farther, and the 20-hour day meant that each hour would be 20% longer. I had plenty of time to go shopping during the “lunch break.”

The other students avoided looking at me and left quickly. “You did warn me, sir,” I said to Belzac, “that I would be mistrusted.”

“Yes I did,” he answered. “I am not sure I expected this, however.”

“I’d rather not push myself on them. I think my best plan is to simply be there, so that they think it’s their own idea when they accept me.”

“That is a good plan, I think” Belzac said slowly, “as long as they do accept you in the end. But I am afraid that you are going to fight more than your share of duels.”

“I’m not exactly looking forward to that. I expect that getting poked with a sword hurts, even with aqua vita to patch it up afterwards. But if I understand the dueling code correctly, even receiving a challenge would be a sort of acceptance. They could not shun me, afterwards, whether I won or lost.”

“True. Very true. Well, you have two hours before the laboratory and you need to go and buy your books.”

“Who is he?” I asked Luce. We were on a street of shops near the hôtel, and ‘he’ was a stout, turbaned individual. It seemed strange to think of him as oddly dressed, since I myself wore a costume unlike I had ever worn before: Low buckled boots, pocketless silken pants, a linen shirt that was more than half-way to being a tunic, and a sash with my sheathed boot-sword stuck through one side and a wrist-leash coiled and stuck through the other. The sash I’d borrowed from Belzac, while the rest I had first put on in the Black Druid’s lab, less than a day ago.

“He’s Farad ib Farad, the Ysbene ambassador,” Luce whispered back. That made sense of why I saw his clothing as vaguely middle-eastern; according to my instant geography lesson earlier that morning, the Ysbene Empire was a vaguely middle-eastern place.

He led a girl on a wrist-leash; her hands locked in handcuffs in front of her body, while he held the other end of the leash in his fist. Actually, this was what had first drawn my attention. A Cernian master kept a wrist-leash available, but usually did not apply it to his girl unless he had a particular need to listen with his Master’s ear. Farad’s leash was the first one I’d seen in actual use.

The girl herself had dusky skin and exotic high cheekbones, and wore both a collar and a pair of belled anklets locked on her ankles. Otherwise, she looked much like Luce and the other slavegirls I had seen on the street, dressed in a sleeveless slave tunic that came down to the knees and leather scraps tied around her feet. Slavegirls might wear sandals when their masters allowed them to work, but they never wore regular shoes or boots. So instead slavegirls had simple leather foot-wraps to protect their feet when outside.

All the slavegirls I’d seen were attractive enough to enter beauty contests, but Farad’s dusky girl was beautiful enough to win them - or she would have been if it weren’t for the lifeless, beaten air about her. At first I thought she might be one of the ‘diminished’ women Belzac had told me about. But then she noticed my observation of her and her master, and looked up. I saw intelligence in her eyes then, and also a deep fear. I turned away. “Why is Farad’s girl so... the way she is?” I asked Luce.

Luce didn’t answer right away. “She’s a branded girl, master,” she said at last.

“Explain, please.”

“In the Four Empires they mutilate their girls, master, and then use a special poison so that the wound never really heals. In the Ysbene Empire, the custom is to brand the thigh, and then to rub the poison on the brand so that it stays sharp and well-defined. It keeps the girl from being diminished, so that she can be sold cheaply, or given away as a gift. But if she tries to run, or rebel, or if she’s abandoned, it burns her until she dies from the pain. And it does something to her spirit, so that she’s always afraid.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “If I were branded, I don’t think I could ever be happy again. I’d rather be diminished. I’d rather become a wild woman again than be branded.”

I gave her a quick, one-armed hug. “Not to worry,” I said, forcing cheerfulness into my voice. “I don’t intend to let any of those things happen to you.”

I had just spotted the bookstore I wanted to visit when I saw Edmond and Guilliam leaving it. Both still wore their Watchguard uniforms, of course, and neither had a female companion. None of Belzac’s current students did. I remembered hearing, or overhearing, one of the other students ribbing the two Watchguardsmen for not planning to attend the upcoming slave auctions. Apparently, the men in the Watchguard had a custom of hunting ‘wild women,’ the diminished feral girls of the forests, rather than buying slaves in the market. But from what I overheard, it was a custom mostly honored in the breach.

The two men saw me at the same time I saw them, and turned to bear on me. I bit down on a swear word. This was going to be ugly.

“Look, it’s the Black Druid’s thrall.” Edmond said. The two men had blocked me; otherwise I would have just ignored them and moved on.

“And the Black Druid’s slavegirl,” Guilliam said.

“With the Black Druid in the Tower, perhaps his thrall will sell her. For the same cheap price he paid for her.”

Several people were watching us now: A few men with their girls, a few unaccompanied men, and a couple of slavegirls running errands while escorted by their masters’ arbi. I showed Edmond my teeth in a not-smile, and chose my words carefully. Not wisely, perhaps, but carefully. “The Black Druid is my enemy. And I paid a very high price for this girl. I paid in sweat and fear and permanent exile from my homeland. Are you willing to pay an equal price, or are you just a miserly cad?”

Edmond turned red and reached for his sword, fumbling at the peace-knot. My sword was out; I had drawn it without thinking when Edmond had gone for his hilt - and my sword didn’t have a peace-knot. Watchguardsmen customarily peace-knot their swords and no one thinks worse of them for it, but a civilian with a peace-knot would lose face. A small part of my mind cursed my new fencing reflexes. Another small part noticed that both Luce and the other girls watching had backed away and knelt beside the nearest solid objects, which struck me as a prudent move on their part. Later I learned that slavegirls did this as a standard trained response, that they were taught from childhood to fall back and kneel when blades were drawn.

I stood there with my sword out, feeling like an idiot, when Guilliam stepped forward. “It’s against law and custom here in Renes, to draw blades and brawl in the street,” he sneered.

The city of Renes was the capital of Cern - I had just learned that this morning. I braced myself to apologize, saluting them both with my sword and resheathing it. “I freely admit that I am a stranger here, and not completely familiar with the customs and laws here in Cern. I apologize for any rudeness I may have committed in my ignorance.”

Edmond gave me a very small nod and turned away, followed by Guilliam. Crisis over, I blew out my breath. Luce stood up to join me, and we entered the bookstore.

“May I help you, my lord?”

It was a female voice, but not Luce. I looked up into a spectacle-wearing face. “Yes. I’m looking for the basic alchemical texts, and also for a copy of Leschmits Guide, if you have that, and a book on modern etiquette.”

“This way, my lord.” She turned to lead me to another section of the bookstore.

For an instant, the concepts of ‘wearing spectacles’ and ‘slavegirl’ clashed so strongly in my mind that I thought I had found a free woman in Cern after all. Then the rest of her appearance registered. She had called me “my lord,” of course, and she wore sandals and the usual sleeveless slave tunic. She also had five slave bands locked on in what I was already starting to think of as the ‘old fashioned’ style, but her collar, bracelets, and anklets were all set with gems. And at second glance, her tunic was of especially fine cloth as well. In all, she was wearing an enormous amount of wealth.

Beyond what she wore she seemed ordinary enough, at least for Cern: A little older than Luce, perhaps, but still young. She stood about as tall as Luce, but with hair that was wavy to the point of curliness instead of being straight. She had a foxy attractiveness, as pretty as Luce or most of the other slavegirls I’d seen, but not more so. Yet even beyond the spectacles and the wealth she wore there was something odd about her. I just couldn’t say what.

I was still chewing this over when I collected Luce, paid for my books, and left. In addition to the etiquette book and Leschmits Guide, I bought the alchemy textbook I had originally come for and a volume that I had found Luce leafing through. Finding the proper payment distracted me for a time, as I dealt with the unfamiliar Cernian coins: The link and half-link and sceptre and all the others. But I returned to the problem after leaving the shop. What was it about that girl?

It wasn’t the spectacles. Maybe it was the eyes behind the spectacles. They sparkled, but there was a depth to them. They reminded me of Belzac’s eyes: Old and wise but still with a sparkle of life and good humor in them.

“That was an interesting girl at the bookstore,” I said.

“Yes, master,” Luce answered. “Her name is Ceci; I know her slightly. Her master’s Marlon del Saville. He owns the bookstore, and has partnerships in a lot of other things. He’s very rich. It’s kind of him to let her work there as much as he does.”

This last made sense when I thought about how things worked in Cern. The arbi performed most of the labor, and slavegirls spent a lot of time tied up or chained. It fit in with other hints I had picked up too. Slavegirls apparently considered it a treat to be allowed to work, to be allowed to perform tasks and do things, and the masters doled out just enough work to keep it so. I would have to remember that.

“She’s much older than I am,” Luce went on. “I think she’s in her third century now.”

I stopped, thunderstruck.

“Master?” Luce asked.

“Please be quiet now, Luce,” I told her as I began walking again. “I need to think.” I did need to think. Things I had noticed with out realizing them fell into place. Belzac del Boise was the only gray-haired man I had seen in Cern. All the other men seemed to be on the youthful side of middle age, even the Black Druid. Their girls seemed even younger; none seemed more than a dozen or so years past adolescence. But this was an illusion. Three centuries for Ceci, and I didn’t know how many for Belzac. That was why Ceci seemed so odd: She looked young but she had the wisdom of enormous age. I had seen it in her eyes, behind her spectacles. For that matter I’d glimpsed it in Orane and failed to notice it.

It must be the aqua vita. I knew it could heal cuts, and Belzac had implied that it could heal infections and other diseases. If age was a disease, it must cure that as well.

When we reached the hôtel I had mostly recovered from my insight. We removed our footgear: Luce took off her foot-wraps and I replaced my boots for slippers and my boot-sword for my slipper-knife. “Can I take the books to your rooms, master?” Luce asked.

“Just a moment.” I fastened the wrist leash on her, restraining her so that I could listen with my Master’s ear. Then I pulled her to me and kissed her throughly. I heard the relief and pleasure within her at this display of possessiveness. She had played the saucy fearless wench all morning, but only yesterday the Black Druid had tortured her and nearly killed her. She needed badly to know that I owned her now, rather than he.

At last I stopped, and removed the wrist leash. “Now you can go,” I told her, handing her the books.

“Yes, master. Thank you!” She scampered barefoot across the carpet, her ankle-bells jingling softly.

The student laboratory consisted of ten benches similar to the one I first saw when I came to Trion. Each had a carboy of water at one end, several drawers of glassware and other equipment, and more equipment scattered on top of the bench. Among that equipment, I was glad to note, was a pair of safety glasses. My new body here on this world didn’t need corrective lenses to see (unlike my old body back on Earth), but it felt wrong to do labwork without something to protect my eyes.

The task for the day was to prepare distilled aqua vita, and then, if one had time, to make a first attempt at precipitating red crystals for a protective amulet. Not that Belzac expected any of us to succeed. Making those red crystals for ourselves was the point of this course, or at least the lab portion of it, and we had a triweek - a Cernian “month” - of lab sessions in which to accomplish this.

The glassware didn’t have the convenient ground-glass joints I was familiar with, but rather used corks as stoppers and connecting adapters. I had never dealt with these before, but I managed to use the cork borer and set up a distillation apparatus without putting a hole through my hand. The water, hmm. I did not like the look (or smell) of the water. I lit the burner and evaporated a few drops of water in a metal spoon, and then frowned at the white crust left behind. I decided to distill the water before using it.

Having had the experience of setting up many distillations in the past, I quickly had this one boiling merrily away. The equipment was unfamiliar, and I had to recycle the cooling water, but the basics were the same.

“Ho there, you fool,” a voice by the next bench said. “We’re suppose to distill aqua vita here, not plain water.” I turned to face the speaker.

“My name is John Smith, not ‘you fool,’“ I told him, “and there’s a method in my madness. Didn’t you hear in the lecture that aqua vita is best when made with pure water? I’m purifying the water first, by distilling it.”

“Huh,” he said. Then he went back to muttering darkly at his glassware as he struggled to set it up.

Having collected a flask of distilled water, I pricked my finger for the necessary drop of blood. I swirled the flask to mix everything, then touched a drop of the liquid to my finger. It was only my second time, and the magical speed with which the cut healed still amazed me. Belzac came by to see how I was doing, and raised his eyebrows on seeing my setup. “There was no need to predistill the water for this preparation,” he said.

“It couldn’t hurt, sir,” I answered. “I have time.” It was true: Despite my unfamiliarity with the equipment and the extra time I took to distill the water, I was still ahead of most of the others. I had the advantage on them of years of practical lab experience. I switched flasks on the distillation setup and set the burner back in place.

The flame burned with the familiar blue color, but the burner itself was squatter than any other I had ever seen. Its true strangeness, however, was that it had no connection to any gas-line. I didn’t know how it worked, but it seemed to violate the conservation of energy. I might have an advantage in practical technique, but I was behind my fellow students in understanding alchemical theory. Shrugging to myself, I made a mental note to look up how the burner worked and turned back to recycling the cooling water for my condenser.

I collected three fractions in good lab style: A fore-run, a large main fraction, and a small after-run. The main fraction scintillated slightly. I smiled at this: According to the lecture, high-quality distilled aqua vita sometimes did scintillate.

Next came dissolving two different salts in two separate flasks, using the distilled aqua vita. Then the critical step: Add Solution A to Solution B, swirl to mix, and set the flask down and wait for crystals to form.

Nothing.

I frowned at the flask, willing crystals to form, and made myself wait a bit longer.

Still nothing.

I hunted up a glass rod on my bench, made sure it was clean, and began to scratch the inside of the flask with it. After a minute or two, I saw a bit of solid form, then a star of needles. I set the flask down and watched gleefully as the flask filled with white crystalline needles. Then disappointment shot through me as I remembered that the desired crystals were red, not white.

I did not know whether I wanted to shrug and smile, or frown and curse. So instead, I began to set up a filtration, to collect my crystals. Then I realized that Belzac was watching me. In fact, everyone in the lab was looking at me.

“You have a fine crop of crystals,” Belzac said. “A good yield, and doubtless quite valuable. But I must ask, why were you scraping the inside of the flask?”

“It’s a standard trick, from my... from my Past.” I decided on the spot that that’s how I would think of my life on Earth: It would be my Past, capitalized. “Scratching the side of the flask disturbs things in various ways, and helps the first seed crystal to form. Once the first crystal forms, the rest follow.”

“I see. You are a scholar and a gentleman, John-Smith. If you could only find your warrior’s heart, you could achieve great things. Now I am sure you know to do this already, but I will say it anyway: Take care in collecting those crystals. As I said, they are doubtless quite valuable.”

I did take special care in filtering and drying those crystals. I had to make myself ignore my audience; the other students were still watching me. But after I put my crystals safely in a vial and the others returned to their work, I returned the favor. Some were still distilling, two had produced pink solutions with no crystals, and one - Guilliam - had made a red goo and was cursing it roundly. Finally the time came to shut the lab down and prepare for dinner.

The next several days followed the same pattern. In the morning, I would unshackle Luce and lock on one of the five bands. We would breakfast together, and then I would go to Belzac’s library to read Leschmits Guide, or my alchemical texts, or one of the library’s books. Luce usually came with me, sometimes to read but more often to work on her embroidery. I found her to be quite skilled at that, but to judge from her talk her real passion was for jewelry-making.

Orane would show up just as I had to leave for the lecture-room, and she and Luce would discuss matters of clothing while I went off and listened to Belzac lecture on basic alchemy. When I returned, I would sometimes sit and read some more, or talk with them, or go off to practice the sword drill until it was time for lab.

In the lab, my fellow students and I would try unsuccessfully to produce red crystals. I found that I could easily make white crystals, tan crystals, and green crystals, but nothing red. After lab, my fellow students would go off for fencing practice, and I would be left alone to run through the sword drills by myself. I’d then collect Luce, we’d have supper and bath, and a good long talk where she’d tutor me on various subjects. Then I’d chain her in bed for the night.

For the first few days, those bedchains were the only shackles Luce wore, despite the recommendations in Leschmits Guide, despite Luce’s increasingly saucy hints, and despite the example of Orane, who Belzac often kept hobbled or restrained in some way.

Luce knew that I was acting correctly when I fettered her at night, and I knew that she knew it: I could hear the certainty in her mind. But old habits die hard, even when hammered with evidence heard with a Master’s ear. Part of me still felt guilt and shame at being the master of a slavegirl, and if truth be told, part of me was scared by how much I enjoyed making Luce helpless. So I chained and bound her only to the minimum extent needed to keep her from diminishing, rather than to the greater extent that she really wanted.

One morning, Orane sat down beside me and began a respectful verbal flaying on the matter. “My lord,” Orane said at the end, “you say you feel guilty about belittling Luce. However, you truly belittle her when you refuse to listen to her advice. A good master values his girl. How can he value her fully if he holds back from either the advice or the enjoyment she provides him? Your impulses are entirely civilized; you shouldn’t fear them, or feel shame over them.”

I turned to Luce, who was sitting beside me: “You put her up to this, didn’t you.”

“Yes, master,” she said. “You wouldn’t listen to me, so I asked Orane for help.”

“All right,” I said, “I’ll be good. And I suppose I should start by ‘punishing’ you for your insolence just now.” Thus I tied her hands behind her with a strip of cloth, and left her like that for the rest of the day. She loved it.

After that, I made a point of regularly restraining Luce. Depending on whim I might use an ankle-hobble, or I might use an elbow-hobble - a strap that connected the upper arms behind the back, allowing Luce the free use of her hands and forearms but preventing her from lifting her upper arms. She would sometimes pout at this, and sometimes would make saucy jokes and give me her patented impish smile, but my Master’s ear could hear how my bindings always pleased her. Sleeping in bedchains for six or seven hours each 20-hour day was enough to prevent diminishment, but it hadn’t been enough.

I finally realized how a routine of bondage would seem sensible, given how physical restraints could enhance a female’s mental powers, while freedom threatened her with the loss of her intellect and humanity. I might have chosen otherwise for myself, but then I was neither a female nor a native of Cern. Luce had lived with this all her life. She had grown up expecting to be sold into slavery - had looked forward to it, in fact. She took comfort from fetters and restraints. In fact, she had a fetish for them - except that it wasn’t a fetish but rather something normal, something shared by almost everyone. Here, the perversion was a dislike of shackles and bondage, a thing that called for other, nastier measures to confirm a female’s slave-status.

In addition to learning about mastering slavegirls, I also learned about alchemical crystals. White crystals were the most valued, used for the most demanding applications, such as vitalizing arbi. Tan crystals were almost as good. They could be used for cruder sorts of arbi, but were mostly used in other objects such as the light-amplifying mirrors and self-cleaning carpets in Belzac’s library, or the water-heating bathtub in my suite. Green crystals were useful in agricultural magic or magic that protected against the elements. Brown crystals were the lowest quality, and normally were re-dissolved to make various elixirs rather than set directly into objects.

Red crystals, which none of us had managed to make yet, protected the user from harm. They also animated ‘martial’ arbi, arbi that could fight at least somewhat, unlike the white-crystal arbi that were completely inept at combat. The problem with red crystals was that they had to be made by the user - a man couldn’t use another’s red crystals.

When worn by the crystal’s maker, red crystal amulets turned aside arrows, rocks, and other missiles and also inhibited sword-cuts. This made warfare on Trion a close-in affair. Cannon were of use only against ships and fortifications, and smaller firearms were unknown. Bows and crossbows were only used for hunting. Combat normally consisted of swordsmen leading squads of arbi against each other in hand-to-hand combat. Because of their construction, arbi were immune to most thrusting attacks and had to be hacked apart. The men, on the other hand, were mostly immune to cutting attacks (thanks to their protective amulets) and could be disabled only with thrusts. Thus the cut-and-thrust sword was the most common weapon, although some warriors preferred halberd-like pole arms.

Armor was typically limited to small ‘buckler’ shields if it was used at all. Partly this was due to the climate: The Isle of Cern had an essentially tropical climate, as did most of Trion, and the heat discouraged the use of heavy armor. But for the most part the disuse of armor came from the fact that armor and protective amulets did not work very well together - and the amulets provided superior protection.

I also learned that Belzac had been understating things when he called my crystals “quite valuable.” An arbi only needed a few grains of white crystals, but those few grains were worth a hundred silver links or more. I had made enough white crystals for dozens of arbi, and my other crystals were almost as valuable as the white ones.

It was Belzac himself who told me this: He wanted to break with the custom where his students made him a gift of any crystals (other than red ones) that they might come up with. “I feel as if I am cheating you,” he had said when he offered to pay for the crystals. “Normally my students produce just enough to cover the expenses of the class and little more. But what you have already made is enough to cover the whole class three times over.”

“You told me yourself that generosity is the important virtue, here,” I had answered. “I’m glad you told me the value of my crystals, but I still want to follow the custom. I’m still adjusting to some of your customs here, but this one struck me as the fitting thing to do, right from the start.”

In the end, he acquiesced, but then he made me a gift of a second arbi. “As the owner of a slavegirl, you really should have at least two,” he had said, “and you will have other expenses, as well.” Then it was my turn to acquiesce.

On my seventh day in Cern, I was bored enough with the Sword Drill to leave the hôtel. After the lab, I headed for the nearby Field of Swords. If none of Belzac’s students would help me, then perhaps an outsider would do so. I took a wrong turn or two getting there, since the place was tucked away out of sight, but I finally arrived. I began to set up, among the other men practicing - and I heard the whispers begin: “That stranger... Black Druid... thrall... not a real...” I heard these whispers more clearly than the ones back at Belzac’s first lecture, either because we were outside or because the whispers were louder, I didn’t know which. I felt my ears burn, followed by my whole face when I realized that the others were leaving. By the time I was ready to begin, I was the only one there.

I might have turned around and headed back immediately to the hôtel, but I got stubborn. I had come here to drill with the sword, and that’s what I was going to do. I saluted an imaginary opponent, and then ran through the Sword Drill and it’s variants, just as I would have back at the hôtel, taking my usual hour to do so. At the end of the hour, I noticed I had an audience, a man watching me in silence. I didn’t recognize him, but I didn’t think he was part of the crowd that had left when I arrived. I turned and saluted him with my blade. “Good day, friend,” I said. “Perhaps you can help me. Would you be so kind as to point out the flaws you see in my bladework?”

Without a word, the man turned and left. I stood for several seconds frozen with anger. Then I slammed my sword back into its scabbard and stalked back to the hôtel.

I was still mad when I arrived in my rooms, and at the same time grimly determined not to take out my anger on Luce. She saw my mood and stayed quiet herself. We ate in silence, and sat silently for a long time afterwards. At last Luce asked shyly “May I dance for you, master?”

I would have refused. I didn’t want to watch a slavegirl dance, I wanted... I didn’t know what I wanted. I remembered my earlier determination not to take out my anger on Luce. I remembered Orane’s lecture on how a master should value and enjoy his girl. I waved my hand in permission and forced a smile. “Yes. Dance for me.”

So she danced for me. My arbi provided a beat, banging on improvised drums, and she danced the wild, vigorous dance of a nude slavegirl who in theory danced for her master but who actually danced for her own pleasure. As I watched, I felt my smile go from forced to natural. She smiled back at me and increased the tempo.

Despite her desire to be kept and owned and bound, Luce wasn’t a ‘natural’ slave. Freedom was natural, but for her and the other females of this world, ‘natural’ meant creeping through the woods as a mindless animal; cold, hungry, and dirty. Slavery was civilization, with the comforts and brightness that civilization could provide to rational beings. But like all human beings, Luce needed to at least pretend to escape civilization from time to time, to keep the animal side of her human nature healthy. The dance was her way of doing this.

I was glad that she had found this outlet. I wished her well. I would keep her as a slave not because it was the right or just thing, but because it was the generous thing. But in the same spirit of generosity I would do what little things I could for her happiness.

The dance came to an end with Luce flinging herself into my arms. I toweled the sweat off her and bound her with silk scarves, hand and foot, with a short length of silk connecting the bound wrists and ankles in what Leschmits Guide called the “classic ife tie.” Luce giggled and squirmed, then suddenly lashed out, fierce but helpless.

I touched Luce gently, listening intently to her with my Master’s ear. In her spirit I heard a desire to be gentled and tamed, and so I made my touch soft and soothing as she struggled and snapped at me. I spent a long time gentling and taming her, playing a tactile lullaby to her spirit. She giggled, and I found myself kissing her, tasting the sweat on her body. She squirmed, warm in my arms, then gave a sigh of contentment as I squeezed her tight. My Master’s ear heard her sudden awareness of my body and her own growing passion. I undid the cord connecting wrists to ankles, but left her bound, hand and foot, so that I could continue to listen. We both laughed, and I picked her up and headed toward the bath. It was time to rejoin civilization.

(If you want the rest, you’ll have to buy the e-book, available at Fiction4All.)