Chapter Four: Punishment

+++++Ezra+++++

After Ezra told Anise about his life on Earth, something changed in the way she treated him. She still treated him as a servant, especially when Fenrik might overhear, but she also no longer treated him like a child, as she'd often done in their lessons. Perhaps it was because she knew there was an educated adult lurking behind those pitch-black goggles rather than a simple demon in the body of a sixteen year-old boy.

She also stopped trying to teach him magic. Perhaps that was for the best - whenever he tried, there would be an intense and radiating soreness from his thrall-plug, as if it was trying to exit his body. And, while he would love to rid himself of the plug, it was his understanding that extracting the thing would pierce his heart and lead to a very speedy demise, and that it was very illegal for anybody to attempt to remove a thrall-plug surgically. So he was stuck with the plug and magic wasn't going to happen…

It was his understanding, though, that there were plenty of people in St. Arbalest who didn't have appreciable magical ability. The purple (or sometimes dark blue) prymen couldn't do it at all - most could barely speak in complete sentences and the occasional prymen who managed the 1st elevation was treated as a genius of their race. In fact, pretty much nobody got to Anise's moderately-impressive ability without years of training, and there was a lot of moderately-impressive stuff that you could learn for a lot less money in a lot less time. So, really, the big disadvantage to not being able to do magic was that Ezra was stuck as the enslaved manservant of a crotchety sorcerer who thought he was about as smart as a reasonably-bright prymen.

"Prepare the parlor for guests - pick up those damn papers - and lock yourself in your chamber before twelve thirty."

"Yes, sorcerer," Ezra said - that was how Fenrik liked to be addressed by anybody who wasn't friend or family: sorcerer. He was at the 7th elevation, after all, and deserved all of the plaudits and accolades associated with seven decades of accumulating arcane power.

Seven decades! Now, Fenrik was no spring chicken, but he also didn't look anything close to the eighty years that he apparently was. Ezra would have guessed late forties. He'd heard that there were some sorcerers who even…

"Ah!" he clutched at the sudden pain in his chest, pulsing and radiating throughout his entire body. He braced himself against the sorcerer's workbench.

"Don't you get your grubby hands anywhere near my crystals, you addle-pated thrall! Just because you've said, 'yes sorcerer' doesn't give you leave to stare off into the abyss - do as I say… now!"

The pain in Ezra's chest evaporated and he scrambled off, trying to catch his breath. When Anise was around, Fenrik was a bit kinder to him. Mean, but no more so than several bosses that Ezra had the misfortune of having worked under. But when she was out of the house, he could be a bit cruel, possibly even sadistic. He'd leave Ezra weeping in pain and expect him to be back on his toes post-haste or there would be worse pain and for longer.

+++++Ezra+++++

As he tidied the parlor and prepared a selection of drinks for Fenrik and his guests, Ezra wondered over what his life had become, polishing, straightening, and pouring, hovering near the verge of tears and generally feeling sorry for himself. He wondered what had become of himself back on Earth… had Anna come down from her own trip, only to find him a vegetable like the body he currently occupied had been? Had he died? Disappeared? Were his parents grieving for him? What about his little sister?

"Oh damn…" he'd been dribbling tears on the serving table and would have to wipe it down again.

Ezra wouldn't say he was alive and well, but he was… well, alive. He wished he could contact the people he loved and let them know he wasn't dead. But there was no way to do that, not even if he was a Lord Sorcerer at the 10th elevation with the powers of the arcane warp at his disposal. You could cast a magical net into other realms to trawl in disembodied spirits, but there was no way to parlay that into actual communication.

It was said (by some, possibly-hopeful, possibly-deluded demons) of infernics that when their bodies in Medias died, their souls would be drawn back to their home planes. But, as far as Ezra was aware, that just meant he'd be dead on Earth rather than dead on Medias. Not a huge improvement. Like it or not, he was stuck as a thrall.

He was finished crying and he was finished tidying. The drinks were out and neatly-arranged along the counter. It was time for Ezra to go back and lock himself in his little cell, with its pallet, its chamber pot, and the several books that Anise had given him to read. If he really tried, he could power the lighting crystal she'd given him, though it made his chest ache to do so. So he supposed he'd tolerate an aching chest and read and wait for the pulsing in his chest that meant he'd been summoned again.

+++++Ezra+++++

It was the strangest thing. Ezra just blasted through books. He'd never been a particularly fast reader back on Earth, though he had been a careful reader, which balanced things out for his job. But he could read Unilog far more quickly than he'd ever read English, and it wasn't just because it was easier to read. He could read close to five pages a minute and, when he thought back on what he read, he could recite it word-for-word…

That was overstating things. His memory wasn't perfect. For things he'd read more than a day or two ago, he'd have little gaps and errors in memory, though there was never an instance where he couldn't give a very specific recounting of the passage. But his memory was phenomenal enough that it made re-reading books pretty pointless. He was tempted to start writing his own book, just like he'd done on Earth… but, given that he was living a fantasy story… a shitty, depressing fantasy story where he was a fucking slave… the notion of writing a novel somehow felt less appealing.

Ezra had just finished reading the last of his books and was just about to turn to his emotions again and start feeling very sorry for himself when there was a tapping at the door. That meant either Anise (since Fenrik would never knock - he'd either barge in or just pulse Ezra's thrall-plug) or it meant Yacha the magpie was bored. Yacha was even smarter than a regular magpie and far dearer to their master-sorcerer than Ezra was, but he was so smart that he easily grew bored and would peck on things or just shit on the floor and watch in seemingly-endless fascination as Ezra scurried over to clean it up. Ezra hoped it was Anise.

"Come in," he said.

The bolt unlatched and Anise shuffled in, watching her skirt to make sure it didn't get to close to the chamber pot - which, for the record, Ezra kept scrupulously clean. She clearly saw that he'd been crying. It must have been written all over his face. She smiled sympathetically and sat on the little wooden crate that Ezra had brought in to use as a table/chair.

"My uncle has a guest," she said.

"I know. He had me clean up the parlor for the meeting… how he manages to get so many papers everywhere so quickly is a mystery to me…"

"He summoned an obnoxious ghost years ago and is too stubborn to admit he doesn't know how to get rid of it," she said.

Ezra studied her face for a moment… if she was joking, she had a very good poker face. He also noticed how pretty she was… he hadn't always thought that of her. He remembered thinking her face was a bit too wide and her nose a bit too thin for it. But now he couldn't see those flaws at all. Who was to say they even were flaws. It was just her face, and it was pretty, and seeing her concerned for Ezra calmed him. He attempted a smile.

"The man he's meeting with is Gladion… the man who sold him the soul crystal he used to capture you…"

"Oh…" Ezra wasn't sure how that affected him now.

"I think he wants to sell you back to him."

Oh. Well… that was worrisome. Which would be worse: spending his life as the slave of a sporadically cruel sorcerer who preferred the company of his magpie-demon? Or spending his life as the slave of a merchant who sold crystals designed to enslave perfectly innocent demons? It was hard to see any upsides.

"We need to show him what you can do before he sells you to that horrible man," Anise said. She squeezed his hand - it surprised Ezra so much he nearly recoiled. "Please?"

"Fine."

+++++Anise+++++

Anise didn't know much about Mr. Gladion, but she knew he was not a good man. Half of the mages at St. Quillia's got their soul crystals from him - usually smaller crystals for pets, but there was the occasional magistress who thought she could manage a more powerful demon-thrall and bought one of the big, expensive crystals. The kind that could only be grown inside a person, painfully and cruelly, by siphoning off their life force. It usually didn't kill the host, but there was a lot of risk and a lot of suffering involved.

Gladion was a big borrenkin who was best friends with Stomen Blose, who was an even bigger, crueler borrenkin. He was a loan shark and a bookie for a significant fraction of the city's not-insignificant underworld, and even a sheltered upper-crust girl like Anise knew about it. The implications of Gladion's friendship with Blose was pretty obvious - when you couldn't make your payments to Mr. Blose, Mr. Gladion would front you the money, but you'd have to keep one of his crystals embedded in your belly until he got it back. And if the pain and sickness that ensued made it so you couldn't earn enough to pay back the loan by the time the crystal had matured into a painful, swollen, carbuncle-lined thing? That was just fine - Mr. Gladion would pop the crystal out, stick a new one in, and wait as long as he had to.

Anise could only guess at what Gladion would do to somebody like Ezra… probably take him apart to see what made him so special. But maybe he'd pawn him off on Blose to remember everybody's bets, vigs, and credit lines without having to jot down a single mark.

"It's fine, come on."

Ezra clearly didn't feel comfortable coming out. After all, her uncle had ordered him back to his chamber. But Anise was allowed to take him out if she needed to, and she thought it was pretty damn important to get him out before the two men shook on it, signed a contract, or did whatever it was that morally-shady men did to complete business negotiations.

Uncle Fenrik wasn't a small man, but Gladion was large for a borrenkin, which made Fenrik look downright scrawny in comparison. Gladion's speech was a slow, terribly low drawl that reminded her of the creaking of the great wooden ship she'd once been on. It was hard to understand unless you'd heard a lot of borrenkin, in which case Gladion's was probably just a bit below-average in terms of ease of understanding. Gladion had arrived with another borrenkin who, thank the lord, wasn't Mr. Blose.

Shit. Her uncle had spotted her… well… that was the point, wasn't it? To get him to see Ezra doing his tricks?

"Anise, why are you hovering in the doorway? Did you want to say hello to Mr. Gladion?"

"Hello," she said. Her voice sounded so small.

"Your uncle says you're soon to make the 4th elevation - very early for a human woman!" Gladion smiled, the little roots in his gums outlining his teeth like something in a cartoon drawing of a person's mouth. "A very auspicious family!"

Mr. Gladion might not have been exclaiming it… his voice was just very loud. Anise went to school with a few borrenkin, and they were mostly lovely people. The women naturally grew flowers in their hair, which she was frankly jealous of. But that sort of thing came with the territory of being a half-plant half-mammal symbiote thing - plant bits and animal bits in all sorts of unusual combinations. Her biology text said that the borrenkin males had a 'root', whereas the women had a womb not unlike what humans had, and when the two of them coupled, the plant half came from the man and the animal half from the woman, and by the time the baby was born the two were merged in a single plant-animal organism. Most borrenkin were proud of their unique biology. All Anise knew was that the big ones were downright terrifying.

"Why is the thrall out of its chamber?" her uncle snapped. "Anise… did you let it out?"

"Yes, I let him out," Anise said, and she scarcely believe she'd contradicted her uncle in front of company like that. Oh well… what was he going to do? Send her back to school early?

"And do you have a reason for this, or do you just delight in seeing me cross?"

"Please, uncle! You have to listen - Ezra is not a lesser demon. I can show you!"

"I was going to ask to see the thrall, regardless," Gladion said. "Step out, boy. Let us see you."

Ezra stepped out, hovering right behind Anise, as if that might somehow offer him protection. There was no point in beating around the bush - in for a brushpin, in for a brownback. She spread her notebook on the serving table and had Ezra do the trick she'd discovered.

She'd discovered it quite by accident, but it had astounded her as much as any magical skill she'd ever seen. Ezra had even been surprised by it. She'd asked him to copy from one of her books and then asked him to take dictation from her in Westricht, and he'd done both perfectly, at the same time, one pen in each hand scrawling away in fluid Unilog/Strichtic script. You could count the number of people in St. Arbalest who could do that on one hand. You could probably count them with one finger.

After showing off that trick, she had him do the memory trick where she'd show him a page of text for twenty seconds and he'd repeat it back flawlessly. This was a bit less impressive, as there were memory impresarios and high-elevation mages who could do the same thing. But for a demon-thrall who'd been cognizant of his surroundings for all of three weeks? It was virtually unheard of.

Mr. Gladion regarded Ezra and then Anise, his beady black eyes seeming to peer right through any thoughts of ruse or treachery she might have - and, of course, she had none. With great ceremony, he folded the contract that Anise hadn't even noticed him holding. He slowly reached across the table with that great half-tree arm of his, and he placed the folded paper in Uncle Fenrik's hands.

"On second thought, Sorcerer Fenrik, I don't think we'll be giving you a discount on your next soul crystal. But your niece's demonstration was quite entertaining. If you're determined to recoup your 'losses', I'd start there."

+++++Anise+++++

She'd never seen Uncle Fenrik so angry. He kept his composure - barely - until after Mr. Gladion and his colleague left. Then he pulsed so much pain through Ezra's thrall-plug that it left the poor boy thrashing and whimpering on the floor. He didn't even scream. He couldn't scream. He just whimpered like a sad puppy, and Anise cried the whole time.

After he forcibly marched Ezra back to his chamber, Fenrik stalked back into the parlor just as Anise had decided to sneak back to her room and lock the door. He stormed right up to her, his lips twitching in anger, and looked like he was about to say something. Instead, he smacked her across the face hard enough that she stumbled back and nearly tripped over a chair. She held her throbbing face… her whole jaw hurt… trying to will the tears away. They still came.

"You miserable wretch… do you enjoy humiliating me? Or is it just the prospect of wasting my money you like? You cost me a stack of brownbacks, and likely more. Do you think that plant bastard won't tell people Fenrik of Westval tried to cheat him? Do you think he won't laugh with his friends about how Fenrik's fat niece embarrassed him in his own parlor? Well? Say something, you little tart!"

You're a horrible man, Anise wanted to say. I hope they all say horrible things about you, she thought. But all that came out was a little croaking apology: "I'm sorry."

She just wept on the couch there for a bit. Eventually, Uncle Fenrik grew annoyed with her misery and stormed off so she could be miserable all by herself, and when he did she heaved a great sigh of relief and struggled to her feet, stumbling back to her room to examine the big red mark on her face.

The next morning, Uncle Fenrik was contrite, and he had every reason to be. When he'd smacked Anise, one of his rings had hit her right on the cheek, and it left a welt that had quickly become a bruise. He mixed a healing decoction for her, and the bruise disappeared and the swelling went down within minutes. Anise supposed she should have been grateful, even though she knew the real reason he'd done it: she'd be going back to her parents' in three days' time and would be returning to St. Quillia's the day after that. He couldn't send her back bruised up.

Clearly, Uncle Fenrik expected thanks and a counter-apology, and when he didn't get it he became cross. He didn't hit her again, thank the lord. Instead, he had her engage in finger-blistering menial work with Ezra all day. And if she did get horrible blisters? He could always give her another healing potion to make them go away.

They started with all the chamber pots (though, for some reason, Ezra's was incredibly clean) and dishes, and then proceeded to the storage room, which was a lost cause. In that dark and dusty space, no amount of scrubbing or rearrangement would change the fact that there was a lot of broken, old stuff in a musty, claustrophobic space. Uncle Fenrik made them clean it anyway. He stayed in his study the whole time, listening for anything that sounded like conversation - and, if he heard it, he'd blast Ezra with thrall-plug pain. Sometimes he imagined he'd heard something and would blast him with pain regardless. And, after the third or fourth time, Anise found herself becoming annoyed at Ezra for some reason. Maybe it was just from all of the nascent blisters on her hands.

"You shouldn't have let me bring you out," she whispered. "You'd have been better off with Gladion. If you made him really mad, he'd have just put you out of your misery and killed you. You could go back to your own plane…"

Ezra glared at her. Or what approximated a glare while wearing welding goggles. "Where I come from, if you die, you're just dead."

"It might be worth it. I mean… you're already dead, right. You're not even a real person. You're a dead person riding in somebody else's body." She immediately felt bad about saying it, but she couldn't take the words back.

"Fuck you."

"No, fuck you," Anise said. "I don't know why I even care about you. My parents are in fucking Argent Estate right now and I'm in my uncle's musty storage room getting blisters… ow!" She sucked on her finger. "Blisters and splinters in my finger with a demon-thrall who can't even do magic."

They moved furniture, bagged scraps, and wiped away dust for another minute. Anise yelped and sucked at her fingers again. She didn't know how a place could have so many damn splinters… maybe it was the ghost?

"Do you really have a splinter?" Ezra asked.

"A few."

"All right, let me see them."

It turned out that, among Ezra's growing list of talents, was de-splintering fingers in a reasonably painless way. He dabbed the exit hole with cleaning solution in lieu of disinfectant, which did hurt a bit, but not as much as knowing that she'd said hateful things just because she was angry. She wasn't like Uncle Fenrik. She wasn't going to be like Uncle Fenrik, not ever.

Anise sighed. "I'm sorry I… said what I said."

"Okay."

"I'll make it up to you," she said. And she would - an idea had just occurred to her. A pretty good idea, she thought - though her track record of evaluating ideas wasn't so good lately. She smiled. It was definitely a good idea, what she'd just thought up.