Dangerous

by Sharon Green

  Gordi didn't hesitate to do as he'd been told, of course, and once he was back sitting as he'd been the look in his eyes was pure pole-axed.

  "Now you know how we got you here, and you also know that making a man a slave isn't hard at all," Tain said to a Gordi who looked like he might pass out. "Not to add insult to injury, but you have to obey everyone, not just me. How did you like the experience of being what you are?"

  "I never thought -! This can't be possible, but I know I didn't imagine it!" Gordi sounded almost wild, and then he looked at Tain again. "I don't want to tell you that I hated what you just did, but I can't stop myself. You have to get this drug out of me, you have to!"

  "There is an antidote to the drug, but no one on this world has it," Tain answered, her words still mild. "I think if you people outlaw slavery and really mean it, our own people will see their way clear to supplying the antidote for your use. On the provision, of course, that the women get to be freed first. After all, they've been chained to that drug longer than you have."

  Gordi opened his mouth, probably to protest, then he closed his eyes and shook his head.

  "It never occurred to me that being subject to the drug could be so … devastating," Gordi muttered as he ran his hands through his black hair. "You can't refuse to do something even if you want to, and that's not right. Using the drug isn't right, and that's one stance no one will ever move me from."

  "I'm glad to hear that," Tain told him, and her tone was the least bit more gentle now. "And since you're such a fan of truths, here's one that ought to be self-evident right now: as long as anyone at all is in danger of being enslaved, you yourself are not safe no matter how well protected you think you are. As long as any kind of slavery is possible, just because you aren't enslaved today doesn't mean it won't happen to you tomorrow."

  "Ten minutes ago I would have argued that statement, but right now all I can do is agree," Gordi said, raising his head to look directly at Tain. "It hadn't come to me sooner, but you're not from this world either, are you? Does that mean off-worlders aren't as easy a mark for the drug as we are?"

  "No, it just means we're sneakier than you are," Tain responded with something of a smile. "We brought you and your friends - and your major opponent - here to show you our side of things, but Killen wanted to start with you alone. He obviously thought you were the most reasonable of the bunch, and I'm glad to say I now agree with him. But the question still has to be put: will you talk to those others and try to get them to see things your way?"

  "I think I now need to talk them around," Gordi said slowly, as though examining his words as he spoke them. "For the second time I wouldn't have said exactly that if I'd been given the choice, but this damn drug isn't giving me the choice. You bet I'll talk to them, and if one of them doesn't see it my way I'll probably break his neck."

  Jake expected Tain to tell Gordi that he couldn't break anyone's neck without her permission, but she just smiled and left her pallet to move closer to the three sleeping men. She spoke softly to each of the three, and a couple of minutes later they were all sitting on their blankets fully awake.

  "What the hell is this?" the man named Flam asked as soon as he could, glaring around at everyone in the room. "How did you manage this, Gordi? No, never mind how you managed it. Just show me the way out of here."

  "You were brought here for the same reason I was, Flam, and you won't be leaving until you hear what I have to say," Gordi returned at once. Then he began to tell the three what he'd been told by Jake, but he didn't stop there. He also described the rest of what had happened, and the two men who were supporters of his ended up looking shaken. Flam, though, was another matter.

  "If you expect me to believe all that garbage you're a bigger fool than I thought," Flam said with a snort as soon as Gordi fell silent. "I don't know how you got me here, but whatever you did it was a waste of time. Keeping slaves isn't what's holding us back, listening to fools like you is what's doing it. And if the drug worked on you and this other fool, that doesn't mean it will work on me. I'm not as soft and womanish as the rest of you, so stop wasting my time with bullshit."

  "If what you were told is bullshit, why are you still sitting on that blanket?" Jake heard Tain say as she came back into the alcove. He'd only been distantly aware of the fact that she'd left as soon as the three men were awake, but now she was back.

  "I don't answer to slaves, they answer to me," Flam spat as he glared at Tain. "Go to your knees to me, slave, and beg me to punish you for insolence."

  "Sorry, sir, but I'm not allowed to obey the orders of anyone but my owner," Tain stated, the look in her eyes even more feral now. "And it so happens that my owner isn't allowed to give me any more orders. The same, though, can't be said for you. You have to obey anyone I tell you to obey, and now I'm telling you to obey these two women."

  Tain gestured toward the archway, and it was Risdin and Char who walked in. The second woman looked furious with what seemed to be terror hidden beneath, but Risdin didn't look the same. And Risdin was also carrying a switch.

  "I don't like the looks of you, slave," Risdin said to Flam in a hard voice. "Get to your knees and bow to me, and then beg me to punish you for being insolent."

  Flam went to his knees instantly, bowed his head to the floor, then said, "Please punish me for being insolent." Gordi wasn't as shocked as the other two men, but Jake could see that even Gordi was shaken by what was happening.

  "It will be my pleasure to punish you, slave," Risdin answered with a smile that was one of the most frightening Jake had ever seen. "First, though, you can take that body cloth off. Slaves don't cover themselves without the permission of their owners."

  Jake expected Flam to straighten up to take off his body cloth, but instead the man removed his covering just as he was. It came to Jake then that Risdin hadn't said the man could straighten up, so he hadn't even tried.

  "You were too slow stripping yourself, so you've earned even more punishment," Risdin said once Flam was naked. "Crawl over here and then position yourself properly in front of me."

  When Flam raised his head and began to crawl, Jake was able to see the man's face. Someone else in Flam's place would have been shocked, but this man was nothing but totally outraged and furious. He was so filled with hatred for what was being done to him that he seemed to have room for no other awareness.

  "I don't like the expression on your face, slave," Risdin said while Char shivered where she stood behind the other woman. "If you reach the point of not being able to take any more punishment, you have my permission to beg for forgiveness."

  "That's not going to happen, bitch," Flam snarled from where he knelt facing away from Risdin. "I'm not a whiny female who can be made to - Ah!"

  The first stroke of the switch ended Flam's rage-filled attempt at defiance, a thin red line appearing on the man's heavy buttocks. Flam carried more weight than a man of his size should, which made his backside a really easy target. Risdin gave him another stroke of the switch, obviously putting a lot of her strength into the effort, and Flam's light-brown-haired head came up with his hiss of pain.

  It wasn't long before Jake was flinching with every stroke Flam was given, but Flam himself was doing more than just flinching. The man's buttocks were being turned really red, and Flam began to writhe with every stroke. After his first gasp he hadn't made a sound, but Jake thought that Flam wasn't keeping his jaw locked just to stay quiet. The man could see the other three men watching him being punished, and it looked like that awareness was almost as painful as the switching.

  Flam took about two dozen of the hard strokes delivered by the switch before Jake noticed a slight difference in the man's attitude. It wasn't pain alone that was twisting the man around; humiliation rode Flam like something with spurs, and after the two dozen strokes Flam couldn't take any more.

  "All right, you've made your point!" he said suddenly, his tone less than even. "I can't resist the drug any more than anyone else, so there's no need
to go on with this."

  "Is that your idea of begging for forgiveness?" Risdin asked, having paused in the switching. "If it is, I suggest you think again."

  Flam gritted his teeth again, but was only able to take two more strokes of the switch before he had to admit defeat.

  "All right, all right, I'm begging!" he blurted, the hatred he felt thick in his voice. "I'm begging to be forgiven, so you can stop this now!"

  "You know, I once begged my owner to stop punishing me," Char said suddenly, stepping closer to where Risdin stood. "I was crying at the time so I sounded a lot more sincere than you just did, but all my owner said was that he wasn't ready to forgive me. With that in mind, I don't think we ought to be ready to forgive you."

  Disturbance flickered across Flam's face along with a frown, but Risdin grinned and offered the switch to Char. Char looked at the switch for a moment with no expression, then her lips curved into a smile that turned her radiantly lovely and she took the offered branch.

  Five minutes later Flam was shouting out his pain and doing a much better job of begging, but Char just kept striking his backside with that switch and all the strength she could muster. Jake understood how the woman felt, but he still had to force himself to keep watching. His own experience with punishment was still too fresh for him to watch without reacting, and when the first trace of blood appeared among the welts he just had to look away.

  "All right, Char, that's enough, I think," Tain's voice came a long minute later. "He's crying just the way you were and he's also begging, so let's show him that you have more compassion than your owner did. Give me the switch."

  Jake looked up to see that Flam's backside now bled in a lot more places and the man was more hysterical than simply crying, but Char was still switching him. The look on her face was frenzied and she didn't seem to have heard Tain, so Tain didn't waste her breath repeating what she'd said. She touched Char's neck in the same way he and Tain had touched those guards the night before, and when Char collapsed into unconsciousness Tain caught her before she hit the floor. Risdin, looking seriously disturbed, took Char from Tain and carried the beautiful woman out of the alcove, the other native women stepping back from where they'd been standing just outside. Once all the women were gone, Tain turned back to Gordi and his supporters.

  "You've now had the most striking example possible of how much damage slavery can do," Tain said to the men over Flam's sobs, undoubtedly seeing, as Jake did, how pale and shaken the three men were. "That woman is so beautiful that she didn't have a prayer of not being enslaved, and now she may never recover. She should have been someone's loving wife and the doting mother of children, but she may never come far enough back to sanity to do any of that. Is being able to use her body any time her owner allows it worth losing her as a human being?"

  "No, not for me," Gordi said at once, his voice rough and his gaze haunted. "What about you, Artro, and you, Dimmis? How do you feel about it?"

  "I feel like throwing up," the larger of the two men said, looking directly at Gordi. "And not just because I know it could be me kneeling there instead of Flam. That woman… She looked afraid when she first came in here, but then the hatred took her over… I don't ever want anyone to hate me as much as she seems to, and it kills me that I don't know how to heal her. And it kills me even more that I would have used her happily if she were a slave and was offered to me."

  The smaller of the two had also raised his head, and when Gordi looked in his direction all he did was nod slowly with pain in his gaze. He made no effort to disagree with the first man in any way at all, and when Gordi saw that he nodded.

  "Then we're all agreed," Gordi said, now sounding more grimly satisfied than shaken. "Slavery has to be ended at any cost before it destroys us completely."

  "But you're not all agreed," Tain pointed out, drawing the attention of the three men. "There's still someone who hasn't been heard from, so let's get his opinion. What do you, think, Flam? Have you decided to be against slavery now?"

  "I'm going to see you all dead, devil take me if I don't," Flam choked out, obviously being forced to speak the truth. "I'll find those females wherever they try to hide, and once I have them I'll flay them myself. But first I'm going to see all of you dead, just the way you deserve to be for doing this to me. Dead, I want you all dead!"

  By that time Flam was screaming, and Gordi exchanged glances with the other two men. Jake knew well enough what he would do in their place, but the decision belonged to the men who lived on this world.

  "I can't help but notice that Flam isn't taking any part of the responsibility for what happened to him," the smaller of the two men said slowly. "Considering the fact that he has more than one slave and never hesitates to knock them around, he ought to have at least hesitated before deciding that this is all other people's fault. I have a feeling that Flam can't admit that he brought this on himself, not now and not ever."

  "I'm forced to agree with you, Dimmis," Gordi said with a shake of his head. "I always thought that Flam just refused to admit out loud that he might be wrong about something, but that isn't true. Even this hasn't convinced him he's wrong, which means there isn't anything that will."

  "And that leaves us no choice about what to do," the taller man, who had to be Artro, said in the same sober way. "Flam has the ability to talk the hotheads and empty heads into going along with him, and we can't let that happen again. This time the matter is far too important."

  "What are all of you talking about?" Flam demanded from where he still knelt, his face twisted into a horrible mask. "How can you just sit there without even offering to help me? You deserve to die along with them, and once I'm out of here I'll make sure it happens!"

  "I've heard it suggested that you make a habit of seeing people who don't agree with you disappear or die," Gordi said, apparently pretending that Flam hadn't just promised to kill him. "Is the suggestion true? Are you the one who sent assassins after me and made it necessary for me to have guards around all the time?"

  "Of course I'm the one," Flam answered with a snort of ridicule, glaring at his questioner. "Too many of those damn fools listen to you instead of to me, but the lousy assassin blew it. But don't worry, I just found some who can reach you no matter how many guards you have, and all I have to do is pay them. Then I'll never be bothered by you again."

  Gordi's jaw tightened when he heard that and he sat straighter, but before he could speak Tain interrupted again.

  "I think you three men should be free to treat Flam the way he's begging to be treated," she said, then glanced toward Jake. "Come on, Killen. Gordi and his friends need some privacy right now."

  Jake happened to agree with Tain, but it still set his teeth on edge to have to follow her out of the alcove. She led the way to the right, away from where the others were and toward the darkness, and then she stopped and turned to look at him.

  "I think we're almost finished here, and while we're waiting there's something I'd like you to do," she said, looking up at him with no expression on her face. "I want you to cancel every order you ever gave me, and then I want you to order me not to take anyone's orders, including yours, ever again."

  Jake had no choice but to obey, and once he'd done as she'd asked he also didn't hesitate putting in his own request.

  "Now that you're completely free, how about doing me the same favor?" he said, wondering why her expression hadn't changed at all. "You can't really argue that doing as I ask would be anything more than fair."

  "Doing as you ask would have been fair if you'd made the offer of freeing me first on your own," she said, no longer meeting his gaze. "I spent more than a little time wondering if you would ever get around to making the suggestion, and then I got tired of waiting. I'm going to have the women get ready to leave here, and once the men are done with their chore I'd like you to do the same with them. I want out of here and off this world as soon as I can get them."

  And with that she pushed past him and strode away, making no ef
fort to glance into the alcove to see if Flam had been put out of his misery yet. Jake stood for a moment and watched her go, finding it impossible to dig out words of his own. He had the feeling he might have screwed up somehow, but right now he couldn't see where. Tain seemed to feel that he hadn't considered her, but the same could most definitely be said about her toward him. If she'd cared anything at all about him, she never would have treated him the way she was doing.

  Going back to the captives' alcove showed Jake that Flam was almost dead. Artro and Dimmis had obviously held Flam down while Gordi smothered him with one of the blankets folded up for easier handling, but the three hadn't moved back even though Flam was no longer struggling. They were making very sure that Flam was dead before they ended their efforts, which was wise of them. It's never pleasant when you have to kill someone twice in the space of ten minutes.

  The women, two of them helping Char, hurried past the alcove right after the three men stood up, so Jake told Gordi and his friends that they would be turned loose in just a little while. The men nodded to show that they'd heard him, but other than that they didn't say anything. They didn't look as if they regretted what they'd done, but they also weren't particularly happy about it. They spoke together in low tones for a minute or two, and when Tain walked into the alcove again Gordi turned to her.

  "When Dimmis and Artro are free, they're going straight to the guard," Gordi said without preamble. "They're going to give a statement saying they heard Flam admit that he sent assassins after me, so no one will wonder when Flam can't be found. I'd like you two to be my houseguests for a little while, at least until the guard catches up with Himlin. My friends intend to mention your associate's kidnapping along with the rest… And we'd also like to know when we can expect to be freed as far as possible until that antidote can be gotten."