by Stella Cassy
“It was very nice to meet you both,” I said with a smile.
“Will you always bring us our supper?” Alayna asked. It seemed I had made a good impression on her.
“I can try,” I said.
“I hope you will,” Brandon said.
I wondered if my similarity to their mothers was what had won them over. Whatever it was, I wasn’t about to complain. I couldn’t have hoped for a better introduction to the Drakon children.
The children banded together to push the trolley into the middle of the carpet where they promptly set about devouring the food in display.
“You have a way with them,” Meratte said, and I could tell that I had impressed her.
I shrugged. “Children are a lot easier to talk to than adults.”
Meratte raised her eyebrows at me. “You want to trade jobs?” she asked.
I smiled. “I thought your job was so much better than a scullery maid?”
Meratte sighed, but she couldn’t keep the guilty smile off her face. “I might have been trying to make myself feel better by trying to make you feel bad…”
“Did it work?”
“Not really,” Meratte sighed.
“I could help you up here from time to time,” I suggested. “Once I’m finished with my work in the scullery… and if I can get away without the cook noticing.”
Meratte looked at me with new suspicion. “Why would you do that?” she asked.
“Because I don’t like being left alone with my thoughts,” I said. “And… it would be nice to have a friend.”
Meratte gave me a puzzled look. “You are a strange creature.”
“I just meant—”
“You should go back to the kitchens,” Meratte said dismissively. “They will be searching for you.”
I suppressed a sigh and headed back down to the scullery. Maybe it was naïve of me to believe that I could carve out some semblance of a life on this ship. At the end of the day I had to face the facts. I had no life anymore. It belonged to someone else and there was no escaping it. The only thing that was left was resignation.
8
Ranel
Dashel’s ship was titanic and imposing, but I missed the comforting familiarity of the Wyvern. It had taken some getting used to when I had first been given command of the old ship, but I had come to love it.
I was looking over a rundown of all the repairs the Wyvern was undergoing at the moment and it looked like it would be another couple of days before it was fixed up enough for the rest of my crew to move back into it. The slave quarters were mostly done, which was why my slaves, with the exception of the girl, were already on board.
I had been waiting a long time for the fleet to move out from under the mountains of Minapolis, but now that departure was imminent, I was fearful. As I had predicted, Lehar had joined us at the commander’s meeting and promptly sided with Tarion.
“We need credits,” Lehar said. “Without coin we won’t be able to rebuild or fortify our defenses.”
“Our ships will keep,” I said, trying to use logic to steer my brothers in the right direction. “Our planet may not.”
“I don’t believe the Pax Alliance will attack Thirren,” Lehar said.
“Are you willing to take that chance?” I asked. “What if you’re wrong?”
“He’s not wrong,” Tarion said, turning from the window and walking back towards the table. “The Pax act superior but they’re terrified of us.”
“How many planets have they conquered?” I demanded. “How many species have they reduced to chains?”
Tarion straightened to his full height, his chest puffed out and I saw his scales gleam with the excitement of battle fever. “We are not the lesser species of the moon planets. We are the Hielsrane of Thirren. We are feared.”
“Hubris cannot win wars,” I snarled.
“You’re growing cautious in your old age, friend,” Tarion had said, annoyance coloring his tone. “It doesn’t suit you.”
I roared threateningly and Tarion narrowed his eyes at me. “We’ll vote on the decision.”
But I already knew where we would end up. I didn’t need to see the voting process to know I had lost.
“All in favor of moving the fleet to Grissa?” Tarion asked.
Tarion’s hand balled into a fist and he slammed it down on the table in front of him. He had cast his vote. A second later, Lehar followed suit. His fist hit the table with a resounding echo, and I ground my teeth together before turning to Dashel.
Dashel’s eyes flitted to mine for only a second. He blinked at me apologetically before slamming his fist down on the table.
“So be it,” I sighed. “Grissa it is.”
I didn’t like the decision, but I had no choice but to resign myself to the process of decision making that our forefathers had agreed to. Dashel, Lehar and Tarion had immediately moved on to strategizing over the Grissa pillage, while I sat back and listened with one ear. Powerless under the law of commander’s majority, I decided to focus my energy and attention on the Wyvern.
Which was why I was pouring over the details of the ship’s improvements in the privacy of my personal chambers. The list of upgrades I had commissioned was extensive. I wanted the Wyvern fitted with armored shields, powered sensors and stronger fuel cells. I had also added a new annex to the spaceship, a feat that was only achievable because of the Wyvern’s ungainliness. The new addition gave the ship more shape and while it still wasn’t the best looking craft in the fleet, it was certainly an improvement.
The room Dashel had given me was a large circular one with three windows that overlooked the North, East and West. I spent most of my nights sitting in front of those windows, wishing we were up in the air instead of docked together among the barren mountains of Minapolis. Like many of my kind, I hated staying in one place for too long.
Dashel had a private room he worked from and out of respect for my position he had offered me the same. But I had turned him down in favor of working from my room. At least here, the space felt like it was mine. I was looking over files of the Wyvern’s accounts when I heard a soft rap on my door. Frowning, I went to see who was on the other side.
I opened the door to find the marked human. Her brown slave’s garment was covered in a white dust that I couldn’t name and splotches of it clung to her neck and arms. She didn’t seem to mind though. She was holding a large plate on which lay several small circles with a smattering of dark chunks mixed in. I could smell the inviting scent of chocolate, but I was unfamiliar with the food she had brought me.
“What is that?” I asked in an off-handed manner.
“These would be cookies,” she said, holding them up for me. “I made them myself.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “Are they poisoned?”
Her eyes went wide and I could tell she hadn’t expected that response. “Of course not,” she said. She actually sounded hurt that I had even suggested it.
“Just checking,” I said, as I held the door open for her to walk inside. “What are you doing here?”
She placed the plate on the table next to my files and turned back to me. “I wanted to bring you some cookies.”
I regarded her carefully, trying to find the plot in this strange gesture. She had made it clear how she felt about me in more ways than one when she had first been brought on board. I wondered what had changed. Did she really think making me food would help her win her freedom?
I walked over to the table and looked down at the strangely shaped ‘cookies’ she had apparently made for me. “Why are they shaped like that?” I asked.
She smiled. “Uh, well… I don’t know,” she admitted. “I suppose you can shape them anyway you want. This just happens to be the traditional way of making them.”
“What are they made of?”
“Sugar, butter, flour and chocolate,” she replied, rattling off the ingredients and ticking them off on her fingers as she went. “Eggs. I didn’t have everything I needed
so I had to improvise. I tasted one. They’re not as good as the cookies I used to make on earth, but they’ll do.”
I reached out and took one of the circles. It was light as a feather in my hand, but I decided to take a bite and see if this human knew her way around the kitchen. My teeth sunk into it and I felt an amazing release of sweetness erupt in my mouth. The cookie was soft yet crumbly, sweet but salty and unlike anything I’d ever tasted before.
“It’s good, isn’t it?” she asked, watching my face intently.
I popped the rest of the cookie into my mouth. “It’s good,” I nodded soberly.
“My mother taught me to make them,” she said. “She used to say that all she needed in the world to be happy was a plate of chocolate chip cookies.”
I watched her face change when she mentioned her mother. It reminded me of my own face on the rare days I allowed myself to think of Harron.
“Are you ok?” she asked, her voice cutting through my memories.
“Of course,” I replied gruffly. “These things… they’re good.”
“I know,” she nodded. “Cookies are the only things I can make perfectly every time. It’s my superpower.”
“Your mother taught you?” I asked, realizing that I was interested in her past.
“Yes,” she nodded. “I feel close to her every time I bake a batch.”
“Where is she now?” I heard myself ask.
“Gone,” she replied, looking towards the windows.
Gone. The word had a sharp finality about it. I wanted to ask her more, but I knew my interest would only lead to unpleasantness. She didn’t need or want my comfort and I was not equipped to be that person for her. The dynamic between us was too off balance and the collar around her neck only reinforced that fact.
So why was it that I didn’t want her to leave? I had been in the middle of my work and I hated being interrupted. Yet here I was trying to string out a conversation with one of my slaves. What was it about these human women? What was this hold they seemed to have on my kind? It couldn’t be a coincidence that three of my fellow commanders had taken human women to wife.
“Is it true that the gestation period for a human-drakon baby is only three months?” she asked abruptly, as she turned back to me.
I could sense that she was trying to force the conversation too. She had come here for a reason; I just wasn’t sure what that reason was.
“It depends,” I replied. “Hatchlings that can shift generally have shorter periods of gestation. Each pregnancy has been different for each human woman. We’re still learning.”
“That’s… amazing.”
I shrugged. “I suppose to someone who knows nothing about our kind, it must be interesting.”
“I do know some things about your kind,” she replied. “And anyway… I’m learning. How long is the gestation period for full Drakon babies?”
“Five to six rotations,” I answered. “But Drakon hatchlings emerge from eggs. They are not carried by their mother.”
“Right,” she nodded. “I knew that.”
“Is it hard?” she asked. “I mean… for the mother?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “I’ve never asked.”
I nodded. “I can’t imagine it,” she said absentmindedly, as if she were talking to herself. “I can’t imagine what it would be like to have a child that was—"
She looked up suddenly as though she had just remembered I was in the room. “I mean… uh… what I mean to say is—"
“You can’t imagine lying with one of my kind,” I said sharply, filling in the blanks.
She blushed a deep red and the effect suited her. Her cheeks were awash with color and her eyes fluttered self-consciously.
“I can’t imagine it either,” I said. “Lying with a human… seems unnatural.”
She met my eyes then. It was only a second, but I saw a certain amount of curiosity there. Or perhaps I was simply projecting my feelings onto her. I reached out and took another cookie. The sweetness was welcome, and the bitter chocolate provided a nice respite from the doughy softness. After she left, I would probably make short work of the rest of them.
“I made some for the hatchlings too,” she said. “I hope they’ll like them. They’re such sweet things.”
I frowned. “You’ve seen them?”
“A few times now,” the girl nodded. “I think they like me.”
“The cook sent you to the nursery with cookies?” I asked.
She paused and I could see the start of a lie winding its way onto her tongue. Then she changed her mind at the last minute. “I just thought they’d like my cookies... and… it’s nice being around them. It’s much less lonely.”
I could feel my heart beating thunderously against my chest and I didn’t like the feeling of not being in control. Why did I feel that way whenever she was around? Why was I so affected by her presence? Surely it was mere clinical curiosity. After all, I had never owned a human before. Yes, that was it. They made for very different slaves. They spoke without permission, they replaced silence with questions, and they engaged in conversations when they weren’t invited to do so. They may have been slaves, but they had not resigned themselves to their role yet. You could put a creature in chains, but if he did not give himself over to those chains, was he really a slave at all?
“I thought it was understood that you were not to leave the ship’s kitchen unless you were ordered to or else in the case of an emergency. Was there an emergency?”
She stiffened. “No.”
“Were you summoned?”
“No,” she replied, as her eyes turned cold.
The warmth fled from her face, but that did not detract from her beauty.
“You have no right to walk about this ship without permission,” I said gruffly, pushing away my own discomfort. “Do you understand why that is?”
She set her jaw stubbornly, but I persisted. “Well… do you?”
“Because I’m a slave,” she said, without emotion. “Because I have no free will and no choice.”
“Correct,” I nodded.
“I was trying—"
“What?” I asked, with raised eyebrows. “What were you trying?”
She looked away from me. “Nothing,” she mumbled.
I walked over to her and grabbed her hand roughly. She gasped and struggled to free herself, but my grip was too strong and she was too weak. I was extremely aware of how easy it would be for me to push her down and climb on top of her.
“Let me go,” she said in a tone of authority that any commander would have admired.
I wondered where this brazen courage had come from. I certainly hadn’t seen it in the marketplace among the Pax Alliance. No, she had been meek as an Ermit there.
“I will let you go when I choose to,” I said, pulling her closer and glaring at her threateningly.
I could see her heavy, tangled breaths, the flush that covered her chest and cheeks. There was something almost… titillating about the effect. That thought had me dropping her arm like it was on fire. What the hell was I thinking? Had I had completely taken leave of my senses? At that moment I knew one thing with certainty. I needed to get her out of my chamber and out of my sight.
I walked to the door and held it open. “I’m talking you back to where you belong.”
She just stood there and stared at me.
“Do I need to carry you back to the kitchens?” I demanded.
“I don’t belong there,” she said, her eyes were awash with fire. For a second, she looked as fierce as any Drakon I knew. “You know that.”
Before I could go over and force her through the door, she started walking towards me. I escorted her back to the kitchens and the whole time we were enshrouded in a prickly silence that was rife with tension. When we arrived at the kitchens, I took her roughly by the arm and pushed her into the scullery.
She had her back to me as though she couldn’t bare the sight of me. That suited me just fine. It was easier
now that I couldn’t see her face.
“You are too familiar,” I said in a low voice. “In a few days, the repairs on my ship will have concluded. Perhaps I will offer you as a gift to Dashel.”
I slammed the door shut and she disappeared from view. Then I stood there, with the thick door between us, wondering why I still felt her presence just underneath my skin.
9
Yvette
It had been three whole days since I’d last been let out of the basement floor of the kitchens and the scullery. I was no longer being sent up to the nursery either and I wondered if Ranel was responsible for that too. I hated what he had done to me and yet, for some unknown reason, I couldn’t hate him.
I kept replaying his last words to me over and over again in my head. In a few days, the repairs on my ship will have concluded. Perhaps I will offer you as a gift to Dashel.
Apparently my bad luck had struck again. Why else would I be handed off again, a useless object that no one wanted? I tried to find the hidden blessing in my new circumstances. Why shouldn’t my life on Dashel’s ship be better than the one I had imagined on Ranel’s? The fact that I couldn’t come up with an immediate answer made me weary.
It was during my confinement in the basement when I started to dream about him. They were disjointed, sometimes myopic fragments, pushed together by my life of drudgery in the scullery, but sometimes a clear scene would unfold and I would remember the dream when I woke up. In one particular instance I dreamt I was in the scullery alone, and I was trying to clean a particularly stubborn stain off one of the copper pots that the cook favored.
The stain refused to scrub out, so I abandoned it and moved on to the next pot in the lineup. Except the next pot had the same stain, only it was slightly bigger than the last. When I replaced it with the third pot, the stain only seemed to grow. I abandoned my cleaning and turned to find Ranel staring at me from the entrance of the scullery. I could see the great width of his shoulders and the muscles of his arms, half covered in the burgundy darkness of his scales.
