by Shea Malloy
“Where are you taking me?”
He doesn’t respond. He doesn’t acknowledge he’s heard me speak. Typical Andrasari treatment of humans. Our species are insignificant to them and therefore our voices go unheard.
But no matter the consequences, I will not let him treat me like that.
“I exist,” I say bitterly. “You can see me and hear me, just as I can see you and hear you.”
“You exist only to serve your zevyena.”
“The only master I will ever serve is myself.”
I wait for him to zap me, or threaten me with death, or go all the way and kill me like he’s promised so often to do. Instead, he gives me an unpleasant smile.
“Your strength of spirit is admirable,” he says. “I almost regret how quickly I will break it. Let’s hope you apply this much vigour to your duties.”
Silence falls between us and I let it stay. There’s nothing to gain speaking with him. A wall made of pure Rurium steel will yield quicker than Theron Visclaud.
Asking him to see me as something above the dirt beneath his shoe is never going to work. Yet, it won’t stop me from trying.
Not until I find my way out of here, at least.
The sign above the pair of black doors at the corridor’s end proclaims it’s the living area for slaves.
Well, that answers my earlier question.
Theron pauses before the doors, and I wait beside him. I’m both curious and reluctant to see what’s inside. Then, as if he’s reconsidered, he turns away abruptly and takes a left into a shorter corridor.
I follow him hurriedly into a lift which he directs to the main floor.
The lift announces our arrival, and the doors open into the bustle of workers of the Andrak.
Polished glass and gleaming chrome surrounds us, the ceiling high and arched. The Andrak is the residence of the Konai, and all important members that serve as the government of Andrasar.
Everything seems so modern and advanced compared to the quaint village in Yoah I’ve lived in for twenty-two enur.
Most of the people I see milling about are Andrasari dressed in unwrinkled clothing, wearing polished shoes, and possessing the appearance of a life of care and comfort.
The rest are humans covered in unflattering grey, metal collars around the necks. Some wear a simple dress with sleeves that reach the elbows, the hemming down to the calves, and a tie around the waist to keep the ends of the dress from falling open. The others wear coveralls with no pockets.
The humans here don’t look as beaten and abused as what I’ve seen outside of the Andrak. Ostensibly, being in direct servitude to the Konai has its benefits.
The stares of some Andrasari follow me as I walk behind Theron. Self-consciousness and embarrassment weighs on my shoulders because of my appearance. The forest wasn’t kind to my clothing, and I know I look dirty and ratty.
Facing straight ahead, I tell myself the Andrasari regarding me with distaste don’t matter to me. I don’t know these people and I don’t care what they think of me. Since many of them believe all humans are filthy and disgusting, then I guess my raggedy appearance will solidify that belief.
Finally, Theron leads me into an infirmary. It’s white walls and stark lighting is almost blinding, and there’s an anti-septic odour. At the large desk stationed near the entrance are two Andrasari beings dressed in white coats.
They both greet Theron, but it’s only the female who meets my gaze as the male picks up his tablet and hurries away.
The Andrasari female’s dark hair is pulled back into a tie, though a good portion of her hair hides the left side of her face. She is beautiful, her features familiar for some reason. When I glance at her name stitched into her coat, I know why.
Eyin Visclaud. Theron’s sister and Nai sa of Andrasar.
“Hello,” she says, smiling. She greets me in the way Andrasari greet their peers by pressing her hand to her chest and dipping her head.
“Hello,” I say, surprised. Awkwardly, I greet her the same way. I don’t need to look at Theron to know he disapproves. His disdain exudes from him in waves.
“I hear you’re my rah’s saviour,” she says, coming around the desk. Then she does something even more surprising than greeting me as a friend. She clasps my hands in hers. Her golden eyes are filled with genuine emotion and gratitude. “Thank you.”
My eyes wide, I nod silently. I’d never wanted or expected any gratitude for what I’d done. But Theron’s loved ones would be happy he’s still standing and capable of his usual terror.
Her gaze flickers to my neck and her lips tighten. She shifts a glare to Theron.
“Why did you collar her?”
“She is a human,” says Theron as if that alone explains it. “As I’ve told you before, she is a flight risk.”
“Then let her go,” she says. This is Theron’s sister? That’s hard to believe. I was always certain the only members of the Visclaud family who didn’t hate humans were dead. Maybe I was wrong.
“Stop undermining me, Eyin,” he says, irritated. “Get on with your work. There are other things I need to do instead of chaperoning a human.”
Eyin scowls, ready to retort when I speak up.
“Why was I brought to the infirmary?”
Her scowl softens when she looks at me.
“I’d like to give you a scan,” she says. “Theron told me you fell when you helped remove the blades. I want to make sure nothing is broken.”
“I’m fine. I don’t hurt anymore.”
“No harm in making sure.”
Although she is genuinely friendly, I don’t feel comfortable. Especially with Theron’s presence like a dark cloud robbing the room of light.
Eyin regards me like someone who’s found a lost, injured baby animal. I feel as much. No-one I love is alive. I’m alone in an incredibly unfamiliar and hostile territory, among strangers who hate me because I exist.
“All right,” I say, relenting. It’s not as if I’ve a real choice. Theron would simply zap me again and drag me off to be examined.
Eyin guides me to a room with a wide, rectangular metal table planted in its center. She instructs me to lie on its surface and, silently, I do as she asks. The table’s surface lights up blue and Eyin retrieves a tablet, a frown of concentration on her forehead as she peers at the screen.
Tired of looking at the ceiling, my head lolls to the side and my gaze connects with Theron’s.
He doesn’t look away and neither do I. That warmth I felt last night in the pit of my stomach manifests again. He’s tall and built so solidly. It must be hard not to notice him even in a crowded room. Literally impossible not to notice him now as his gaze holds mine.
In the same instance I wonder if his wounds have fully healed, I remind myself I shouldn’t give a damn. This bastard imprisoned me, abducted me, zapped me and enslaved me. Not necessarily in that order, but these truths ought to be at the forefront of my brain whenever I look at him. The moronic attraction really ought to go fling itself in the path of a draki’s fire breath.
So, I finally look away from him. After scanning me, Eyin has me sit up. She shifts a curious gaze between me and Theron before she retrieves a syringe and approaches me with it.
“Inoculation,” she says at my suspicious gaze. “You and I don’t have the miraculous blood of the Shifted to fight off diseases.”
Knowing she’s an Unshifted—a Rur being incapable of achieving a dragon form—makes her less threatening. That isn’t to say Unshifted Rur beings are any less dangerous than their Shifted counterparts. They are still faster and stronger than humans. Eyin might be amiable, but I don’t doubt she can kill me in the blink of an eye if, for any reason, she sees me as a threat.
She leans forward to administer the shot in my arm. The hair on the side of her face shifts, revealing a long, jagged, bumpy scar across her cheek beneath her left eye.
Who could have done that to her?
After administering the shot, she nervously adjusts her hair so
it covers her face again.
“You shouldn’t hide it,” I say to her. It’s probably rude to comment on her scar, but she has been the only friendly face I’ve seen in a long time. There’s an impulse in me to show her some sort of kindness in return. “Scars tell an interesting story.”
“The story of this scar isn’t interesting at all,” she says as she helps me down from the table. “It’s a boring tale of a little girl who hadn’t learned yet how to keep her mouth shut.”
“And it’s one that the human needn’t know because it’s none of her business,” says Theron, drawing closer. “Are you finished here?”
“Yes,” Eyin says, throwing a quick frown at Theron before smiling at me. “Nothing broken. Some bruising, but rest will cure that and no strenuous activity will cure that.”
Smiling at her in return, I feel a bit less hopeless about my situation. It’s still terrible, but knowing that the Nai sa of Andrasar seems to be on my side gives me hope that maybe I can find my way out of Theron’s clutches.
Theron and I leave the infirmary and make our way into one of the lifts again. But instead of taking us down, he touches the button for the highest floor.
“I thought you were taking me to the living area for slaves,” I say.
“Is that where you’d like to be?” he asks, surprising me with a response.
“You know exactly where I want to be,” I say, scowling at him. “Even your own rahsa thinks I should be—”
“Be quiet,” he says coldly. “Ever since I met you you’ve been nothing but a thorn in my side.”
Silence falls between us as the lift climbs. It feels strange for a draki like Theron to need these machines. In dragon form they’re not inhabited by gravity.
“Sensible people don’t keep things or people around them that annoy them,” I say, unwilling to obey his order. It’s apparent I have a death wish.
“You’re right. They destroy them.”
“Is that another allusion to killing me? Why don’t you just go ahead and do it?”
“Because as much as you try to pretend you don’t fear death or me, I know you fear us both, human. You have a stubborn spirit. One filled with so much hope that if you push harder and survive longer, things will get better for you. Salvation will come.” His smile is as cold as his voice. “But it won’t. It never does.”
Amid the chiding tone, there’s a bitterness in his voice that says he speaks from personal experience. What happened to him to make him hold onto such a depressing outlook on life?
“What’s the point of living without some hope for better things?” I ask, but he returns to his typical behaviour and responds with chilly silence.
The lift stops, the doors sliding open to admit us onto a balcony. Spread out below is the stunning view of Andrasar City. I pause to admire the varying heights of the buildings, and the greenery interspersed amid the glassy buildings.
However, Theron’s voice intrudes on my appreciation.
“Stop dragging your feet and let’s go.”
“This is my first time seeing the city.”
“Today is a day of firsts for you.”
“More bad than good ones,” I mutter.
He ignores me and leads me to a door he unlocks with his palm against a translucent circle. We enter a room dominated by masculine colours. There’s not much personality here, except for the modern and expensive furniture, but there’s no denying that this place houses someone wealthy and important.
“Is this where you live?”
“Yes.”
He opens another door that’s on the right hand wall leading toward the entrance. He indicates I go ahead of him. I hesitate, but my curiosity and his glower carries me forward.
It’s tiny in here, the trappings almost as sparse as my prison cell. At least the narrow bed looks sort of comfortable.
“And this,” speaks Theron before I can say anything, “is where you’ll be staying while you serve me as my zevyet.”
7
Theron
—
The human does not fight me as I’d expected.
She makes no comment on the matter. She simply regards me with dislike. Despite it all, I still find her beautiful.
“Bathe and get rid of those rags you are wearing,” I order her in harsh tones, irritated by the treacherous thoughts in my head. I indicate the door that leads to the bath, then the folded clothing I had another slave brought up for her. “Put those on and meet me outside.”
Unwilling to be near her with a bed conveniently beside us luring me to make a horrible mistake, I leave without waiting for her response.
Seated at the table in the main room, I try to focus on the female close by who is naked in the bath. She is a human, I remind myself. No matter how hard my dragon insists that she is mine to take and enjoy, I will not go against my beliefs.
I let work swallow me into its depths. As long as time exists, so does work. As the Overseer, there are always decisions to make, proposals to read and approve, disputes to settle, missives to send. Many of my duties should be Aphat’s, but he foists it all on me while he lazes away his days, enjoying the fruits of being a Konai.
But it’s not a complaint that I have so much to do. I enjoy it. What I do furthers the advancement of Andrasar. When my father was the Konai, he would tell me his dreams of what he wanted to see this great region become.
I didn’t understand it much at the time. As a child, I only marvelled that my father was the greatest being in all of Andrasar. Now I do. He had so much love for this region. My mother would joke that Andrasar was my father’s second mate.
I frown at the time that has elapsed since I left the human to bathe. How long do these beings take to clean themselves?
She’s concocting some means of escape.
Some humans are as intelligent as they are conniving. I’m about to investigate what she’s doing when she exits the room.
She hesitantly approaches me where I sit. She’s even more beautiful now that she has scrubbed away the dirt from her skin. The tatters she wore are replaced with the slave robes I gave her.
Her wild curls have been tamed into a long braid. I am amazed she managed to wrestle her wild curls into submission. I preferred when her hair was loose. Those curls were meant to be free, to be coiled around my fingers while I bent her over my desk and made her scream my name.
“What took you so long?” I ask her irritably. “I dislike waiting longer than is necessary, human.”
She doesn’t look the least bit repentant. This is the thing that I admire in her and but also infuriates me. She is wilfully disobedient despite knowing how easily I can destroy her if I wish.
“Is anger your only emotional setting?” she asks. “That must get tiring.”
“What’s tiring is having a disrespectful slave.”
“I am not a slave.”
“You are mine, now.”
She opens her mouth and then snaps it shut, glaring at me. Clearly she had something even more disrespectful to say and decided not to speak it.
Smart girl.
She closes her eyes briefly and takes a deep breath as if she’s summoning from some hidden source of inner strength.
“I’m sorry I took so long. I’m not intentionally disobeying you,” she says. “These are new surroundings to me. Please be patient with me while I familiarize myself.”
She seems sincere and it disturbs me. I dislike this feeling I have regarding her. Humans have always been invisible to me, like furniture. They exist for whatever purpose they were meant for. Nothing more.
This human... Seela is different.
I exist. You can see me and hear me.
It’s as if my surroundings have only ever existed in black and white, but here she is, this vibrant spot of colour that captivates me.
“We will be visiting a mining plant in the Vak province tomorrow. There have been reports of rebellions brewing among the workers.”
All that calm and sincerity
she portrayed disappears. She looks at me with distrust.
“Are you going to kill them?”
“They deserve no less for their insubordination, but I will not kill them unless they’ve forced my hand,” I say. “I will have you, a human, speak to them. Tell them how much more sensible it is to remember their place.”
“As slaves?” she asks bitterly.
“What else?”
“That would only strengthen their need to rebel. After all, they’re already reminded everyday of what they are to you.”
“Clearly they’ve forgotten if they think they have the power to rise up against their zevyena.”
She shakes her head. “They’re not rebelling because they believe they have the power to challenge you. They’re rebelling because they have no power at all except the will to fight.”
“Will does not equal ability. Will alone does not win a fight.”
“Sometimes, it can,” she says with a shrug. “If you can take several damaging blows from your opponent but have the resilience to outlast him, who’s the victor then?”
“Are you a rebel supporter, human?”
“If I were, I wouldn’t be foolish enough to tell you,” she says. “I don’t support fighting, whether it’s humans against Andrasari or Andrasari against humans. Our differences can be resolved without bloodshed.”
“Yet you stabbed me twice in the arm.”
“In self-defense after you threatened to kill me and chased after me when I attempted to flee.”
At least she has the grace to look repentant, but no apology leaves her lips. Admittedly, I don’t want it either.
Intrigued by a view into her mind, I am inclined to continue the conversation. However, there are other matters I must attend to.
I hand her the tablet with the speech I want her to read at the mining plant tomorrow. Her forehead creases in a frown as she peers at the screen.
“Can you read?”
She looks up from the tablet sharply. “Being a human isn’t synonymous with being illiterate.”
“It isn’t because you are human why I asked.” I am amused by her offended look. “You are from Yoah, home of the determinedly uneducated.”
“Ikkon took my education seriously and weighed me down with any books he could find.” There’s a wistful look on her face. She drops her gaze to the tablet’s screen again before darting a look at me. “Maybe it would be best if the speech were in Human Standard and not in Rur language?”
