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When I approached the woman, a fortyish powder-blue-haired Dorian wearing the castle’s standard eggplant-colored court lady dress, my ears had been picking up her heart. I’ve mentioned before how sensitive my hearing is, but I’ve probably not mentioned that when I draw very close to someone, their heart becomes audible to me. After all, most of the time, I’m not close enough, and frankly, the majority of times that I am in range, I’m probably feeding on someone and my mind is occupied with that.
But as I picked up her hand and held it, her heart was hammering much more wildly than I would consider normal. And I had begun hearing it from farther away than usual.
“Madam, is it possible that you and your colleagues are my father’s former blood slaves?”
The moment I spoke those words, the woman jerked her hand out of my grasp and shrank back, while the tension in the room rose sharply. The countenances of everyone watching me switched immediately from contrite expressions to wary eyes locked on the dangerous predator in the room.
But it didn’t surprise me. I nodded slightly as I stood up straight once more, then stepped back to give the terrified woman the comfort of more space. All the while, I fought back the tears that were straining to emerge.
By this time, I had carefully examined all twelve before me using my fairy sense, and so, I had confirmed that every one of them wore a protective bracelet on their non-dominant wrists. A magic tool of the same type that I had given all my Servants.
I knew why I hadn’t detected them immediately. My fairy sense is a glut of information, and I have to edit what I actually pay attention to. It’s a lot like having to decide which conversation to pay attention to in a crowded theater lobby. The reality is that your ears are actually picking up dozens of them, but out of habit, you will pay attention to the one you are part of, making it seem louder, even if it isn’t really any louder than the ones beside you.
And while I would normally notice a magic tool almost immediately, here in Narses Castle almost every person is carrying at least one magic tool, and sometimes as much as a half-dozen. It’s a paradise of magic technology, so I had become mostly numb to the more innocuous tools, only noticing those powerful ones carried by the various armed personnel.
Apart from Benedetta, the prince and the Hekatoncheir behind me, my audience consisted of ten women in eggplant-colored court lady dresses and two men in the black tang suits that all male clerks were wearing. The women were all in their thirties or early forties, thus the right age to have been in Father’s blood slave harem, while one man was a fellow about the same age as the woman I had spoken to and another about ten years older.
To my knowledge, Father wasn’t interested in men, but he needed to have subordinates he could trust in order to run the Duchy. After his behavior became twisted, he could only rely on a small group of vampires loyal to him, and supplement those with blood slaves. And in a patriarchal society, he needed men, or at least a male majority, for the sake of maintaining authority.
So Father had to enslave men whom he deemed capable, to act as his government’s upper management.
Aunt Elianora had to explain the men among the group of Father’s blood slaves that she brought Tiana to meet, when she wanted to impress upon her the importance of avoiding the blood bond. According to her, Father had a depraved method of pulling this off. He would lure in his intended victim by tempting them with a few of his harem members, then raise the debauchery level by suggesting ‘sharing’ one of them. While the man was enjoying himself, Father would use the girl as his fluffer, in order to grow his fangs, then attack the man, mid-coitus.
Even though she explained it in much more polite and cautious terms than I just did, Elianora got the idea across, and it had been quite distressing for such an innocent girl to hear. Poor Tiana was troubled by it for weeks.
I turned and saw that Benedetta looked puzzled, and she was clearly waiting for an explanation. Instead of that, I told her, “Do not discipline anybody over this. It isn’t their fault.”
Mother’s Lady-in-waiting frowned and immediately objected. “I will do as you say, but My Lady, their manner is too disrespectful. We cannot allow this to continue!”
“I agree,” I said calmly, then, after a pause, continued, “regarding not allowing this to continue, that is. But this was not disrespect, My Lady. They can’t help what my father did to them.”
Benedetta shook her head. “The effects of the blood bond should be fully contained by those bracelets.”
She sounded far too dismissive for my tastes and I frowned as I considered my words. She raised an eyebrow in response to the contemplative stare I was giving her.
“I am very sure I am not mistaken about this, My Lady,” she insisted. “I’ve done considerable work myself over the years to improve the magical methods contained in them.”
“Lady Benedetta, I am not doubting the effectiveness of the bracelets,” I told her, staying patient. “I am telling you they are not a perfect cure, because they only suppress the blood bond.”
The weird night-and-day change in Ceria’s attitude toward me is one of the best proofs of that. She had simply been moderately friendly and a little wary of me, before the bond. Afterword, she’d turned into a sex-starved personal fangirl. More than likely, the explanation was that she was already bisexual, I was right in her strike zone, at least when it came to female lovers, and when the bond removed her wariness of me and strengthened her attraction to me, it was all over. At least, it was so, once the bond gave her a convenient excuse not to hold back.
“Only the blood bond, My Lady?” she echoed, sounding a bit perplexed.
“In the magic inscribed in those bracelets, is there anything at all to help them with the trauma? These women were held against their will as sex slaves, unable to escape due to the bond, and they knew very well why none of their companions were older than their early twenties. Can you imagine the terror they were feeling? No…”
I looked back toward the women in question, as I began to fight back tears again, and asked a more pressing question. “Can you imagine the terror they feel right now, being in the same room as the daughter of their nightmare? It doesn’t matter what excuses they made to themselves to delay coming to see me or even contact me. One way or another, they would have delayed, and it was not their fault. Even if they realized their excuses were no good and knew they had to come to me, their feet simply didn’t obey.”
“But the men…”
“Is it going to be any different, just because they lived through a different experience?” I interrupted. “They spent years, forced to follow, support and obey the man who chained their souls and stole away their futures. Even now, they are probably working here because they lost the chance to build the careers they had dreamed of.”
I don’t know what specific story kept these twelve in this castle, but I believed it was probably because they had few choices. I knew that Mother employed any of Father’s blood slaves who came to her for work, and she had told me that quite a few did so. I would pay attention from now on to see just how many maids and others in the castle were wearing the bracelets. Likely, many other functionaries in this Tower Keep, the central office building of Pendor’s government, would be wearing them too.
I turned back toward the victims and bowed deeply. I bent as close to the perfect 90 degree Dorian bow as I could, while hearing a gasp from Benedetta.
“I offer my deepest apology to all of you for the offenses that my father visited upon you. I pray that you can continue working for the citizens of your land despite my presence, granting your people the benefit of your wisdom and experience. In the future, I shall endeavor to remain out of your sight, as best as I can manage.”
For a long time, nobody said a word. I remained bent, silently insisting on a response, until the woman I had spoken to earlier said, in barely more than a whisper, “Please raise your head, My Lady.”
I straightened up and saw a sea of very conflicted eyes staring back at me. Looking over my shoulder, I saw Rod looking bothered but resolved to say nothing and Gyges with a faintly wry expression.
Benedetta looked very troubled. “My Lady, I don’t know how that would work out. Who are you going to appoint as an intermediary?”
With a nod and a sigh, I noted, “Normally, some person here would be appointed to replace the aide that was killed, right?”
“It’s best to have a mage capable of communications magic in that position,” Benedetta noted. “There are three people in this room who qualify.”
“I’m not going to make any of them do it,” I stated with a shake of my head.
“Perhaps Princess Amana, when she returns?” Rod suggested.
“Your Royal Highness, it would be more prudent to continue employing her as a combat mage,” Benedetta countered immediately. “That is the role she came for, and she has been quite effective at it.”
Pick me! Pick me!
After a baffled second, I realized the source of the spiritual voice and looked over to Gyges, who was politely, almost surreptitiously, holding up her hand in a manner completely at odds with the excited grade-schooler words she had sent me.
“I can help you, Your Highness,” she stated. “I’m a fairly skilled mage, and I am already familiar with this government. I’ve worked in the Six Ministries in the past.”
More to the point, this body is unemployed at the moment.
I shot back, Just tagging along because it seems fun, my foot! You totally planned on this!
Oh, my, what happened to the meek and respectful Junior who was calling me Senior?
You’re the one that said not to!
“Should you really be getting involved?” I asked her out loud. “I understood you’re supposed to stay out of… um, political affairs?”
I had almost said ‘Mortal affairs’.
“My siblings and I have been troubled by recent developments, Your Highness. We’ve been considering whether to lend a hand to your side,” she stated. “My sister plans to visit soon, as well, and you need someone to replace your business affairs aide as well, don’t you?”
Kottos? I asked. Or one of your other bodies?
Kottos, of course.
“You don’t have any particular loyalty to Pendor, I believe,” I noted.
The corners of her mouth lifted slightly. “From the moment I came into this world, my loyalty has begun and ended with Humanity and only Humanity, Your Highness.”
I couldn’t entirely be sure what her words meant, in the context of her identity as one of the Hekatoncheires, because I wasn’t entirely certain who they worked for or what the actual limits of her mission on Huade was. If I heard literally, she considered herself to be working for Humanity as a whole, but to an Immortal, that term encompassed the entirety of the Human Clade throughout the Trichiliocosm, Mortal and Immortal, not just the human race on Huade.
Seeing me still musing over the offer, she added, “As a mage, and as an individual, I am strictly a mercenary. But I am an honest mercenary; once I am bought, I stay bought.”
I had a ton of things I wanted to ask her, but no means to do so, since it was all Immortal matters. But I probably could do a lot worse, so I decided…
“Miss Gyges, I shall hire you on an interim basis while we consider what is best in the long run. Please show us what you can do.”
She nodded, then suggested, “Then I will stay here, and sort things out with these folks while you go back. From the look of them, I think they would do better with you out of the room, Your Highness.”
“Very well,” I nodded, then turned to the staffers. “Miss Gyges will be my aide for government affairs until further notice. Please work together with her for the sake of your fellow Pendorians.”
On our way back to the Main Hall Keep, sans Benedetta and Gyges, I kept my spiritual vessel expanded slightly so I could pay closer attention to my fairy sense even while chatting with Rod. More than one male staffer was wearing the bracelets, as were a depressingly high number of women. I had heard ‘hundreds at a time’ regarding the size of Father’s harem, but it had never fully felt real until now.
It certainly explained the eyes with which the maids had been looking at me, when they dared look. Tiana’s crushing sense of guilt over her father’s sins was throbbing back to life inside me. I would have to force it back down, somehow, in order to work with these people.
