“Kaiji…” Nua said with a slow denial that ended with the ceasing of her strokes, “I’m no goddess. I’m far from as powerful as you think I am. And I’m every bit as cruel as you fear. I am your mistress, you are my property, if I judged you guilty in some way… yes I would punish you as severely as I thought was necessary.”

Kaiji shook her head violently in her mistress’s lap, scattering the long dark hair on her head over Nua’s legs. “When I was where you are, I whipped those who did wrong, punished them. I knew then that this…” She traced her arm over her bare skin and up to clutch the bronze collar, “could perhaps happen to me. Everybody in the city states knows that is just one bad day away. But everybody thinks they can resist it if it happens. I never thought I could accept it either, if any does, I never met them. Everybody thinks ‘they’ will be the one who can’t be broken, and they all have their reasons, I did too, mistress. I’m a powerful mage, I killed dozens and dozens in the fighting until the last day. I was only taken down by Prince Rasgen himself, and that only after I ran out of mana to fight with. Now here I am…” She kissed the right palm again and stroked the back of the hand that her lips caressed, “I kiss your palm, and I love you.”

“You don’t want to go free?” Nua asked with a raised golden brow, the words she’d spoken to Prince Sado loomed large in her mind, even larger than when she’d spoken them. Guilt ripped through her guts like dull fingers trying to claw their way out of a monster’s belly. She turned her eyes upward, away from the slave that looked so small and helpless, almost childlike, despite her age and power.

Kaiji cradled Nua’s hand and rubbed it against her cheek as if it were a mockery of a blow, “I’d be lying if I said no… but we know that can’t happen. By now the Lur’gin company will have put it out everywhere just how much you paid to get me. They’ll do great business off of that.”

“That’s true.” Nua replied, pursuing her lips tight with hidden disgust before she could go on, “It greatly inflated the value of their slaves I’m sure. Like buying a piece from a well known artist for an exceptional price, it raises the value of everything else they sell, simply for having paid that much before, regardless of future quality.” Nua’s answer was very rote, recalling her days on the block and how much she sold for, just belonging to one particular merchant before sale had doubled her worth in a day because of ‘her’ reputation rather than Nua’s own skills or looks.

“You know the market for us well, it must be the same in the west.” Kaiji answered in a tranquil voice, her eyes half shut, at ease holding Nua’s palm against her cheek.

“People everywhere… the same in some ways.” Nua said without looking down at the slave comforting herself.

“Yes, and like there… even if you set me free, well… where would I go? Everybody would assume I ran, or that I failed in some serious way, or maybe Lur’gin would just… just have me quietly killed rather than let it be known that stock was as expensive as I, was cut loose. I haven’t done anything great or profound to earn my freedom. Nobody higher than you demands me the way Sobella ended up with Prince Rasgen. I can’t possibly ‘earn’ enough to buy myself from you. Even if I did, I’m the advisor that failed. You’re…” She placed her lips to Nua’s palm, touching it with the tip of her tongue, “you’re my only hope. My name is ruined, my estate is gone, everything I had divided up and sold. I have no home and no city to call my own. You ask if I want to go free… mistress.” She nuzzled against Nua’s palm.

“It’s useless to ask about what I want like that, nobody will ever let me go free, even if you will, the power of the city, the nobles, even those who pity me, who called me friend and drank with me? They may pity me, even be kind to me. But help me? No, their houses are bound up in a trade that we can’t do without. Going free is almost unheard of. I’m a slave now, and I have to find what happiness I can.” Kaiji reached out to touch Nua’s left hand, though she trembled, to do so she folded her fingers in between the gloved fingers to draw it closer to herself.

“Traditions change, laws change. The world changes.” Nua retorted without malice, looking over to the window where a storm still raged outside, casting bright moments into the dim room with flashes of lightning and the noise of thunder like rampaging horses in the sky.

“That’d be quite a thing to see. Maybe in a thousand years…” Kaiji giggled a bit and lightly tugged on her owner’s left glove, exposing the white false hand with the gem of death and the knuckles of blue glowing gems.

She kissed the black shape. “If you want my years, they are yours, I submit.” Kaiji closed her eyes and waited, and then parted them. “Do you see, mistress? Yes, I’m scared, but I trust you completely now, maybe you broke something in me, maybe you made it whole, but if by some wild chance you could let me go now free of consequences that would ruin me further. If you gave me my Priceless, set her free, and let us go do whatever we wanted? I would present myself again to you, and ask how I can help you, how I can serve you. I think… I think Priceless would too. I believe in you… Mistress Nua Calen Aiwenor.”

“I was expecting a confession of hatred…” Nua admitted, keeping her eyes on the torrential downpour that sent pattering noises against her expensive glass window like nature wanted to break inside her quarters and assert its dominion over them both.

Kaiji kissed the right palm again. “Never. Never. Never. If that was possible, it broke when you didn’t offer some paltry nothing reward for Priceless. I know what she would go for on the market. I… I bid on her a long time ago, for amusement when she was for sale in Komestra. That I did that, is my eternal shame… I love her so much… but then she wasn’t worth more than ten copper coins… if she doesn’t hate me… how can I hate you? You recognized her worth before me. You named my beloved… so wonderfully, so beautifully… and set a reward that will mobilize the city to save her. How can I feel anything for you but utter love and devotion?”

“You’re my goddess… giver of all the good things I now have or will ever have, the hand I trust to hold a whip over me. I may not be your social equal again, if ever I was, given your life of status in the west. But Mistress Aiwenor… I don’t need to be your equal, to love you as I do now.”

Nua stroked the despondent cheek of the bronze collared slave. She sought words she didn’t have, and found memories instead. The way Aalon’s lap felt on her cheek when she’d laid in it after making love to him. His back against the headboard of his expensive bed, how godlike the slender youth had been, the scent of their shared desire coating both their bodies. ‘I was so… happy then. I knew I’d outlive him, but thought… thought I could hold his hand on his deathbed, thought… I don’t even remember what else I thought. But how I loved to pretend I could become his wife, bear his children… make a life with him, even as his property… what was he thinking then? The same? I think he was… now here it is how long later? Almost two hundred years… the irony.’

“Kaiji…” Kaiji didn’t open the eyes she’d closed. “Slave.” Nua said. Kaiji put her tongue lightly to Nua’s palm without any hint of shame or humiliation. It was, if anything, like she was savoring a comforting moment.

“Mistress. Command me.” She asked, her entire body limp as the strings of white pasta Nua had seen heaped onto plates before being smothered in rich red sauce.

“It’s time for you to go to bed. Tomorrow we are going to find what was taken from me, and I will make the guilty pay, you need to be well rested to serve me.” Nua said and began to stir, pushing her back against the wall, she began to rise, taking her lap away, Kaiji had no choice but to move as well.

The eyes of the shapely, naked demon-elf went to the bed, uncertain of what to do. Nua however, read the blood red eyes, very well despite the lack of pupils. She walked to Kaiji’s cage against the wall, “You are not, ‘dirty’ in my eyes, Kaiji. But there are things at work in me I cannot even begin to explain, and right now, I don’t think you would believe me if I told you.”

She opened the door, “I’ll be locking you in for your safety,” Nua added, “I don’t want to risk you going missing too.”

Kaiji took up the simple blanket she had, and wrapped her body in it before stepping onto the thick woven mat she’d grown accustomed to. The memory of a mattress like her mistress would sleep on, was quickly fading into her own personal mythology, like a dream, and now she was awake. She sank slowly to her knees and looked up. On one level, she knew for sure, ‘Mistress isn’t very tall.’ On the other hand, like this, it was like staring at a mountain peak from miles away and from far below.

Nua slowly closed the door so it was secure, and when the door was, from all appearances, just part of the cage, Kaiji spoke. “I… Freyjin, she told me, she’s sure that Karlo is dead. That he’s involved with Priceless vanishing, but that he was killed in turn.”

“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.” Nua said without emotion, “How do you feel about that? Are you… are you alright, slave?”

Kaiji hung her head and held the bars from inside her confinement, “I don’t know, mistress. I remember him vaguely as a nervous boy just trying to do his best. I took pity on him, paid him far more than he deserved and… he grew up. He was still barely a man when I saw him here again as I am now. He wasn’t a bad boy… bad man. He just wanted to help me… he thought he was helping me. But all he was really doing was hurting me because he wouldn’t listen. Wouldn’t understand.”

“Beware the well meaning, they can justify anything by saying ‘I meant well.’ and they tend not to listen.” Nua answered as she secured the lock.

Kaiji heard the click despite the thunder outside, and she felt her body start to relax, lowering herself from her knees to a limp fetal position, level with Mistress Aiwenor’s boots

“Yes…” Kaiji yawned loudly, “I’m not happy he is dead… it makes me sad, that the worthless nothing of kindness I showed that boy, led him to die now. But do you know something else…?” She didn’t wait for an answer, only frowned a little before she answered it anyway, “I’m glad he won’t be around to be cruel to Priceless anymore. I’m glad he won’t be around to be blindly cruel to me, by reminding me of who I don’t want to be anymore. I like who I am now. I’m happy with my Priceless. I’m happy and I love you.”

Through slowly closing eyes Kaiji couldn’t see the tightly shut eyes of the one to whom she had confessed. Even more impossible, even were she not looking from down below at eye level with boots, the twisting tightness in Nua’s guts that was perfectly concealed by flesh and fabric. Nor from where she lay, could the hopeful slave see the tight grip of Nua’s left hand leaving finger impressions on another part of the cage.

As Nua locked the demon-elf within for a long and lonely night of mingled hope and fear for tomorrow, her hand lingered on the bars she’d squeezed too tight, and on the key in her right hand.

She looked down at the tear stained face and slid down so that she crouched outside it and just over the former lady of power. Sensing the motion and hearing the sound of her owner’s movement, Kaiji looked back up at her goddess with wild hope. But for what, neither one truly knew.

Nua looked at her with eyes weighed heavily and a tiny shaking to her tense fingers, and said to her, “A piece of advice, demon-elf. Do not love me. Obey me, but believe me when I say, whatever Priceless knows about being comfortable and happy in this life you’ve found yourself in, she’s wrong about this. If you love me, you will regret it. Respect is good enough. Obedience is good enough. But if you love me, you’re going to get hurt more than you can possibly imagine. Now sleep, and hope for news tomorrow.”

Kaiji had no words for that, instead she pulled the blanket up entirely over herself, so that no part of her was exposed to the world, and did her best to obey, and sleep.