Lodira did as the master of the house said, she dusted the painting on the walls that held the judging, severe, joyless looks of her many ancestors. She washed away the dirt from a balcony, doing her best to pretend she wasn’t shoving her hand into dirty water over and over again, with little success.

“Go help wash clothes.”

“Go check the larder.”

“Go take this order to the cooks.”

The orders from the many senior staff were given mostly with a hint of satisfaction, having seen the once proud and whimsical, and slightly spoiled child have to work hard for once in her life. Yet even that faded as she did it without complaint, holding back tears every hour, but throwing herself into her tasks, leaving less than cruel eyes in the wake of her tiny worthless triumphs.

She held back no more when she reached her room. She curled up on the bed without taking off her outfit, lay on her side, hugged herself, and let her misery out on the straw mattress and threadbare blanket. ‘I’m going to be sold… I’m not a citizen anymore… he really prevailed on the Prince for that… I have no place, no status, no name… nothing. Rasgy… if only Rasgy will buy me and… I don’t know… something? Or… maybe the Duchessa? She doesn’t need heirs from me and we seemed to sort of get along. Maybe she will…’ She left her thoughts behind and wept until exhaustion took her.

She woke when it was still dark, hours later. Venturing to Anton’s study, she took a piece of paper from a stack that sat on the desk. Dipped the quill beside it into the ink, and quickly wrote out her letters.

‘Dearest Rasgen, I am in dire need. The worst is coming to pass, Anton is choosing to sell me to recoup the losses I incurred. I have only a few weeks, I have no idea when this will find you, or if it will. I have no idea what I even ask for except that you do something to save me from this fate. If I am going with the seasonal caravan, then it belongs to the Lur’gin Slave Company. Please… I don’t care what you do with me… but don’t leave me there. With love, Lodira’

She blew lightly on the ink, then folded the letter and began the next.

‘To the Duchessa Aiwenor, I have no idea if you will see this, but if you do, I beg of you, save me. We knew one another only a little while, but I am not what they say I am. I did not do what they say I did. Please, we stood together over Sobella, and I kept your secret, nobody knows. I will keep your secret no matter what… as I have kept my word, please, spare a few coins, and take me from this nightmare. I am to be sold to the Lur’gin Slave Company soon. I will be a good maid to you, loyal forever beneath your heel if you just… please please don’t leave me to whatever horrible fate I will suffer. With my deepest respect, Lodira’

When it was over and done, she walked to the chamber of the Steward, keeping her feet quiet and avoiding being seen in the shadows of the Valoisin estate.

She knocked on the door of the Steward, the faint echo was almost imperceptible, she felt her heartbeat racing in her chest, desperate fear of being caught and having to explain why she, the newest maid, was sneaking into the bedroom of the elderly steward in the depth of the night.

Her eyes cast left and right, and not for the first time did she envy the senses of the elves and other non-human races and their ability to function well in the darkness.

Thankfully, Albaer answered her quickly, she didn’t enter his room, only leaned partially through the cracked opening, she shoved the letters toward his hand, and the aged fingers closed on the papers instinctively.

“Thank you… thank you so much for this… I was never the best person…” She hung her head in shame, “I know I was sometimes a petty little bitch to you when I was small. My only excuse is that I was little, I didn’t know any better… but you were a better father than the one I had… and wherever I end up, I’m going to miss you.” He opened the door a little further and embraced her, the warmth of his body beneath his drab gray nightclothes was a welcome change from the faint chill of her empty room.

She clung to him on her tiptoes, kissed his wrinkled, graying cheek, and dropped down onto her heels again.

“Lodira… I never had any children of my own, but if I’d had one like you, I’d have left this city long ago, it’s no place for someone like you, and this house… it was never right. Wherever you end up, I hope it is the right place.”

He kissed her forehead, and she left him there, closing the door behind him, and she made her way back to her room, back to her bed, and slept in relative peace.

“Do you know the real reason I never traveled much?” Sado asked Diana after yet another interminable day of travel had come and gone.

“No… why is that, Sado?” Diana asked while watching the great city walls close in.

“Because of boredom. It’s so… dull. I hate the carriages, I hate the endless waiting, I hate the lack of easy control, I hate being ferried about, I hate the cramped spaces and confinement. I hate all of it.” He shuddered.

“You hunted though, didn’t you?” Diana asked rhetorically.

“That’s different, I wasn’t going far, just to the cabin, and then I was on the horse and had total control at all times, the world itself was all that confined me. This though? This does not appeal to me at all.” He shook his head with decisive vigor.

Diana reacted with a true and sincere laugh at his sour expression and pursed, dry lips.

“Prince Sado, if the world felt that way, we might have a more peaceful existence around us. People would be too bored to think of war.” She let the laugh fade while he stared at her trying to decide if she was laughing with him or at him, before he settled into a huff.

“Maybe so, but at least we’re here now.” Sado muttered as they heard the gate open for them. “Gate closed in the middle of the day with a clear view for miles in any direction… Yanmelu always was a paranoid sort, but I guess it did make him tough to beat when he worked with Rasgen and the others.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” Diana replied and began to recline with her legs up on the seat. “Do you think he knows we’re coming?”

“If it were me? He would, but the Duchessa is obviously not a Prince, if she’s willing to wait for us to have an audience, there’s no obligation, we could simply send word that we’re here and remain at an inn until they’re willing to speak with us.” Sado replied with a shrug.

Diana closed her eyes as she began to center herself for her task, Sado however, already had his own in mind. He took careful note of how many soldiers patrolled the streets… it was an unusual number, halberds were their preferred weapon, and the buildings were a mix of stone base with wood on the upper floors reliant on cross beams for support. Most noteworthy to him was the armor: chainmail almost entirely, and the city had extensive waterways with many bridges over which traffic passed. Curiously, everything moved at an almost identical pace. ‘Order.’ Sado thought to himself and scribbled down his observations in the foreign language.

Every merchant stall was made to match, every boat that went through the extensive canals went in one direction, eliminating all chaos, and every man guiding the little long boats along the way, did so by moving their long poles at the same pace, like it had been practiced many times.

It was trivially easy to make their way along the long path to the most expensive inn in the upper districts. Unlike Pas’en, Hanak’sen had no grandiose hotels. All the buildings save for the estate of the prince, were small, mostly wood with only half stone at most. The people walked about in radically different clothing than Pas’en. It was bright and colorful sure enough, but almost all were very short, with pants cut off at the knees and shirts at the elbows. Guards wore sandals rather than boots, and to Sado’s eyes, everyone looked absurd.

Only as they rose to a hill did they come to firmer, heavier construction. Roughcut stone was the material of choice, with brick being a close second. Curiously, graffiti was rare, even where the larger stone buildings began to become more common. The streets had a vague smell about them, and the answer to the cause of that odor was found in the sewage trenches into which various citizens seemed to just dump buckets and move on. Occasionally a slave in an iron collar was seen with a brushless broom shoving the garbage, offal, and foul materials down toward the canals themselves. From there they were unceremoniously dumped to float and drift along on the distant journey to far off lands.

“Their lower district must stink worse than Komestran training grounds in high summer.” Sado said with distaste.

“As long as you don’t want to go swimming in their canals, it should be fine, but who knows why they chose a place with such wet ground?” Diana answered, “I came here once with Kaiji a long time ago, and you’re right, it stinks down there, but they keep a group of boat slaves who use nets to dredge the worst of it and force it out of the city. Plus it is easy to defend, short of obscenely powerful magic, you’re not using any heavy siege equipment to get at those walls. Only the stars know how deep they had to dig to get to some kind of bedrock down there.”

Further talk ceased as they pulled up to a two story building of fine marble sheeting with a rich blue fabric dome stretched over a set of short stone steps to shield visitors from the elements.

Curiously, the door did not open out, it was a single large heavy wood, and redshirted slaves in silver collars pushed the far side of one in order to open it, and the whole door rotated inward at the center.

“Different lands… different ways.” Diana shrugged and waited. Sado took up his sheath and exited the carriage, securing it again to his belt, he held out a hand to Diana, she took his hand and descended daintily to the cobblestone ground. “Check with the inn on where to bring our goods, give us a few minutes.” She said to the pimply faced boy in the iron collar and expensive green and gold clothing.

“Yes, ma’am.” He said to the bronze collared Diana, before snapping the reins and driving the carriage forward out of their way.

“How do you think it will go?” Sado asked curiously while they ascended the steps with their hands held high between them.

“How it is supposed to, my good Prince of Chains. As long as you are here to be my shield, I can’t be killed or threatened in this city, and as long as I am free to be myself, I will strike the heart I intend to.” Diana gave a pleasant half smile out of the side of her mouth that Sado could see.

“You know, differences aside… we might just make an excellent team.” Sado looked down at her out of the corner of his eye, and gave a little wink.

“We just might.” Diana said confidently as a slave pressed at the door and began to walk the rotation around for them, allowing them to enter within.

Freyjin prostrated herself to the empty alcove in the temple her mistress had compelled her to build. Again she prayed for strength of will. “Nameless god of death, I heard your worshipper many times praise your will and message. I suffered the beatings and became stronger, but all that I wish is beyond me until the mistress returns. I ask not that you do for me, only that you help me to be strong enough to do for myself.”

She rose again from the private place, so far, only a few had become visitors. Sergeant Vargas, Onimeus, and a handful of the other twenty-five. But it was a seed she cherished.

Sometimes she was alone, sometimes they were in groups or pairs.

But it wasn’t often that nobody went there during some part of the day.

She made her way back to her room, savoring the feel of the warm grass beneath her feet, then slipping on her shoes to enter the great estate. None of the slaves bothered the steward about her work, nobody even spoke to her, which was fairly normal. They tended the sheets, dusted, cleaned, and otherwise simply carried out their tasks, just as she did, dispatching work crews for the reconstruction and expansion projects her mistress had left her.

When she sat down at her desk, she was again in awe of her owner. She propped her head up in her hands. ‘How could she have written so much… does she never sleep?!’ She wondered, and pulled the next document off the top of the list and got to work.

She was on the twelfth logistical document when three little faces poked in, after the long day had come to a close.

Freyjin was about to ask what they wanted, but it was immediately clear they didn’t want words. They approached around her desk, and wrapped their arms around her as one. Freyjin felt her heart melt at the affection.

Lenah, unsurprisingly, was the first to speak. When not in unison, she was often the first. “We didn’t know you bled for us… We won’t be mean again.”

“Who told you… oh, it was Lady Solution wasn’t it?” Freyjin asked with a heavy, weary expression. “That woman… listen to me, I don’t want any of you three ever thinking about that… it was just a test I had to pass.

“She… she wasn’t going to let me have any of you if I weren’t willing to go far enough… and I couldn’t go on without you, it was selfish… that’s all…” Freyjin tried to force normalcy in her voice, tried to speak bluntly as if it had been nothing.

It was less than effective.

“I’m going to… to fight her again.” Freyjin said with quiet resolve. “Two of my daughters are slaves, I can’t bear it… I earned this by losing…” She tugged at her bronze collar. “But I won’t leave my little girls as anyone’s possessions… I’ll fight her again.”

“What if she… what if she kills you… slaves that rebel… they’re killed all the time…” Veema shivered and clung to her mother’s arm.

“I don’t think… I don’t think she will, but where did you learn that…?” Freyjin demanded in a sharp, motherly tone.

Veema’s hand went to her eye automatically.

“The one who bought you before.” Freyjin guessed, and her daughter hung her head to make a tiny nod.

“That’s why I have to. I don’t think she’ll kill me, not from what she’s said before, or punish any of you. But as long as you two are possessions, who knows what might happen…? I… I couldn’t bear it.” Freyjin said in a still, small voice.

Neither Lenah nor Straen said anything at first, but after a moment, one hand from each went to her opposing cheeks, and resolute expressions formed on little faces. “Don’t.” They said together.

“Our mother and sister are gone, the next time we need to be fought for, we will do it ourselves.” They said it as if they had read one another’s minds, “Next time you fight, fight for you.”

Freyjin hung her head and wrapped her arms around them. “No promises… but for now… before we go to bed, let’s not worry about that.”

Nothing more needed to be said for the rest of the night.