I'll just look. Worst case, I buy him, feed him, and let him go. What happens after that is none of my business. Nobody's going to make me keep him.
I repeated this to myself like a mantra while getting dressed that morning, while pushing through the mixed crowd of hurrying Orren'Tal residents, and while squinting and matching the squiggles on the business card against the script on building facades in the most densely populated part of the city. I said it to myself for what was probably the hundredth time when I silently held out the plastic card to the thin, lanky figure who introduced himself as the Maestro of Souls and Desires. If it hadn't been for the identical copper hair, I never would have believed this person had anything to do with the round little Maestro I'd visited yesterday. Too much arrogance in the face, corners of the mouth pulled down in permanent distaste, unpleasant knobby fingers. A faux-silk scarf wrapped around a scrawny chicken neck. Then again, maybe I was predisposed to dislike him; knowing he'd accepted payment in live cargo.
"Where is he?" I said, skipping pleasantries.
"In the shed," the tall Maestro answered, as if this were perfectly obvious, gesturing toward a half-rotted structure at the far end of the property.
Of course, Celesta. Did you really think a man like this would house a slave in his own home? I noted the brand-new membrane roofing that protected against acid rain, and the excellent double-glazed windows with chameleon film to filter excess sunlight. Not quite up to Zwargian standards, but considerably better than half of what you'd find on Orren'Tal.
The shed's rusted floorboards groaned plaintively under my feet. The door opened only on the second attempt; I hadn't dared pull it harder the first time, afraid of tearing it off entirely. A sharp smell hit immediately: stale damp, bitter wormwood, moss, and mold. The room greeted me with silence. Watchful and colorless.
"Where is he?" I repeated, feeling like a broken player stuck on the same track.
"Right there, in the corner," the Maestro's voice came from somewhere behind me, but I was no longer listening, because my eyes had already locked onto a heap of rags.
My heart clenched.
Someone was definitely lying underneath all of it. Ragged, wheezing breaths moved a damp piece of sackcloth fringed with strips of fabric that stuck out like mangy rat tails. I stepped closer, peering into the dim space, taking in the shape of the figure buried under the rags. A humanoid. Definitely a humanoid, not an animal, not a reptiloid nor an octopotroid like the ones Zwarg had gone to war with years ago. An intelligent humanoid with two arms and two legs. A sharp, suffocating sensation rose in my throat. My stomach clenched hard, a spasm twisted through me, my heart dropped somewhere into my heels, and I dropped with it, literally fell to my knees, and shoved the filthy cloth aside.
"Madam, what are you doing?! There's dirt and rust everywhere; your clothes!" came a voice from the doorway. I hissed at it without looking up.
Through the gaps in the rags I could see a chest covered in scars and sores, a hollow abs, ribs jutting out like someone had been starving him for at least six months. It was physically painful to look at him. My eyes stung unexpectedly. On his wrists hung heavy, surprisingly modern magnetic restraints; Tanorgian-made, the kind that activated when a prisoner attempted to flee, pulling the wrists together and capable of delivering a significant electric shock, which was why they were nicknamed pacifiers. If the prisoner died for any reason, the restraints automatically split into half-links. Right now, the pacifiers were glowing a faint pale blue, indicating the slave's pulse was still present.
I couldn't make out his neck from the awkward, crumpled position he was lying in, but in the dim light of the shed I could see a stubbly face, a high forehead gleaming with sweat, whites of eyes moving feverishly beneath closed lids, and long matted hair so greasy it was impossible to tell whether he was blond, dark, or something else entirely. Maybe an Orshan-Mittarian mix with emerald or violet hair. No way to know.
"How old is he? What species?"
What does it matter what species he is, Celesta? He's clearly suffering. No humanoid should be living in conditions like this.
"Universe knows," the seller said, with a curl of distaste. "Age, species; none of it was in the paperwork. Some nobody's bastard. Looks human, except for the horns. Ha, probably his ex gave him those horns, and now they just grew in!"
The Maestro broke into a shrill, unpleasant laugh at his own joke, clearly finding it very clever. I flinched and looked back at the slave's head.
Horns. How had I not noticed them immediately? But they didn't look like Zwargian sensory organs. Not the right shape.
Unease settled over my subconscious like thin cobwebs. A bitter pill dissolved under my tongue. My temples and the back of my skull began to ache; phantom pain, but real enough.
I will find you, Celesta, whatever it takes.
Zwargian or not?
Zwargian men had black horns, glossy, spiraling. These were calcified, light brown. And despite the sores covering his skin, the color underneath looked more like a Zahrani or Tanorgian complexion. No tail with a lethal spine, either. Was there?
My eyes moved quickly over the rags, searching for the fifth limb that every Zwargian male was so proud of.
"Madam, why do you even want him?" the lanky man spoke up again, clearly growing anxious. "You're so small and delicate; you need a real protector. Let me show you one of my professional contractors instead. I have some excellent ones! Come, I'll…"
The Maestro stepped inside toward the client who had inexplicably chosen to sit on a filthy floor in an expensive dress, and took a careful but insistent hold of my elbow. At that exact moment a barely audible raspy sound escaped the slave's lips, and a sudden rush of anger washed over me, directed entirely at myself. What did it matter whether he was Zwargian or not?
"Are you a Maestro of Souls and Desires or not?!" I hissed, yanking my elbow free. "I made it clear from the start that I came here for this one. Him." I gave a firm nod toward the pile of rags and found myself looking directly into a pair of serious, bright gray eyes.
For just a moment the man opened his eyes wide, looked at me with full focus, and slipped back into unconsciousness.
"Give him to me."
Ayur, that seemed to be this particular Maestro's name, frowned and folded his long thin hands across his chest.
"Lady Lesta, I genuinely don't think you need this… future corpse. Look at him; he'll be dead by tomorrow. And if he does pull through, he'll come at you. How are you planning to handle him? He's completely feral. You see those restraints? They handed him to me already wearing them, and if those humanoids spent that kind of money on cuffs, he's definitely a criminal. Let me show you something better."
"No."
The sharp sound of my own voice snapped against my stretched nerves like a whip. I looked the Maestro straight in the face. The fact that he was trying to talk me out of it only made the irrational need to get this man out of here stronger. I dug into my pocket and held out two seckers. Ayur's hand shot out and swept them up instantly.
"That's a deposit on the semi-contractor?"
"That's for renting a gravity-cushion stretcher," I said flatly, getting to my feet. "I need some way to get my purchase home. Load him carefully," I put particular emphasis on that last word. "Have the paperwork ready. I'm taking him now."
"But what about payment for the semi-contractor?!" the slave trader's voice broke into a falsetto.
"You said yourself he's going to die, didn't you? Do you really want trouble with local authorities? If you transfer the documents to me right now, it stops being your problem," I said, watching his face carefully.
I still had the pearl bracelet, but spending my last piece of jewelry on a dying slave, especially when this man's own uncle had practically begged me with tears in his eyes to take the "dead man walking," felt wrong. The lanky Maestro, however, did not look pleased. Not even close.
"He might pull through and not die after all," Ayur muttered, reluctantly. "And besides, this is live cargo."
I glanced at the unconscious figure on the floor. The awful smell, the moldy rags, the sores covering his body. No. I was not leaving him here. This was a matter of principle now. Even if he died, he would die free.
"Take off the pacifiers. That's your payment for the semi-contractor. They're worth more than his life is right now."
"Are you out of your mind?!"
If I'd thought the Maestro had already run through his full range of emotions about this sale, I was wrong. The copper-haired dealer's face went pale as mountain snow on Zwarg, and his hands began to shake, whether from indignation, fear, or some combination of both.
"You're seriously asking me to take off his restraints? Did you hear a single word I said?! They handed him to me already wearing them. Look at his height. Look at his shoulders. Even half-dead he's twice your size, and mine too! And then what happens if he comes around? He's a dangerous criminal! Something is wrong with him mentally! The pacifiers are the only thing keeping him in check if he loses control! How are you going to manage him?! Do you understand that if he kills you, that's on me?!"
I crossed my arms. Strangely, the thought of my own death didn't stir a single note of anxiety anywhere in me. Not one. Me, the widow Gyu-El, get killed? What passed for poison on most planets was, for a pureblooded Zwargian, at worst a mild case of indigestion. And yes, I looked like a small, fragile human girl on the outside, but enhanced muscle density and accelerated regeneration weren't something you could disguise with hair dye. What I actually felt right now was pure, unbounded pity for a creature dying tied up in a pile of filthy rags. The uncle of this Maestro had mentioned the slave had tried to end his own life in every way available to him. Humanoids that desperate don't attack other people. They just don't. I was afraid of a lot of things: going back to Zwarg, marriage to Lacoste, the men in black, another round of mental influence; but the slave in the corner of a shed was not one of them.
"Which is exactly why I'll sign all the paperwork right now," I said, holding the young Maestro's gaze without blinking. "You'll give me the anti-gravity stretcher, and we'll leave through the back. No one will know anything. You have my word. You get the pacifiers the moment the contract is signed; consider them your payment. You can resell them at a good price on the next trade run to Orren'Tal. Look at it from every angle, you come out ahead. And if the slave kills me, no one can connect him to you, because on paper, he'll be entirely mine."
We held each other's gaze for nearly a full minute. I could see Ayur wavering. He ground his teeth, working his narrow jaw from side to side, nervously adjusting his scarf. He wanted to sell; something was just holding him back. Then a raw, hacking cough came from the corner, and the man winced.
"Fine. I'll get everything ready."
I couldn't quite believe I'd out-argued a stubborn Maestro, not when I took the document in my hands, not when they removed the restraints, not even when they lifted the slave onto the stretcher. Everything inside me was trembling like an over-tightened violin string about to snap.
***
Liert Kassel
He wanted to die. How long he'd wanted to simply die.
Every cursed day he'd hoped the radiation on the asteroid mines would finish him. Then that the pirates would beat him to death. Then, after he'd been resold to some man as free labor, that the electric discharge from the Tanorgian restraints would finally do it. But the wretched inborn regeneration wouldn't allow it. He hated himself, his nature, his own body. His damned heart kept beating day after day, stubbornly refusing to be persuaded to stop.
The self-hatred had bloomed like a poisonous flower on the day Fionna died, crawled into his chest, poisoned every artery and vein, paralyzed his will. Hours blurred into days, days into weeks, weeks into years. Time moved like a wide, full river, and he had long since lost count, because he had been living in unbearable agony. Whatever he did, Fionna's face was always there. He wasn't so much living as existing. The moment he fell asleep, she was back, tormenting his memory and his conscience. She looked at him, pressing her bleeding wrists to her chest. Blood everywhere. That day was burned into his memory in red. The entire escape pod cockpit had been soaked in it. Her enormous eyes looked at him with reproach and despair.
“Liert, please.”
Her last words, full of pain, rang out every time he fell asleep. Sometimes like a tolling bell, sometimes like a barely audible whisper. Every time he woke. Every time he worked the quarries. Every time he took the pirates' whip. Every time he remembered what they'd done to his tail.
He'd deserved it.
Fate had landed him on some half-agrarian planet, in the hands of a man named Ayur who called himself by the strange title of Maestro of Souls and Desires. By some incomprehensible instinct, the man had understood almost immediately that Liert wouldn't mind dying, and had offered a deal. The deal suited him, because he could feel that whatever Ayur had in mind would finally let him leave this world.
Reality drifted in gray smears, the nauseating smell of mold and damp, drawing him toward the coming release from this life he hated. He'd even felt something close to relief that his death wouldn't be entirely senseless, since Ayur had explained it might help other humanoids. A kaleidoscope of images and colored impressions flickered past, warmth spread through his whole body, and then he caught a faint, delicate scent, saw a beautiful fair-haired angel, and thought: How strange. Someone must have mixed up the gates of heaven and hell.