Diana’s emerald eyes sparkled brightly, but around them there was the smallest twitch of fear. The fingers that held on to Nua’s own were warm, but moved back and forth over the hands of the woman who owned her as if fearing they were not really there. Or worse, that they might be yanked away and she needed reassurance that they were not yet gone.

“Mistress… the offer you made, I didn’t know what to say. A house, not just any house, but an estate, the estate of the mistress who raised me, and freedom, it was too much to take in at once. Please forgive me for the delay in answering you, but I was really at a loss.” Diana began, her ruby lips were bright and broad in their expression of happiness, and her ample bosom heaved as she struggled to take in all the breath she needed to say what she had to say.

“You have not been mine for long, Diana, but in a very short time, you proved extremely valuable, I almost regret releasing you from service. No, I do regret it, but…” Nua stopped as Diana shook her head.

“My lady… no. The truth is, the greatest dread I had about leaving your service, well… I have had no purpose for all my life, but service to someone else. As grateful as I was to Kaiji for sparing my life, educating me, and giving me all the comforts I had, the truth is, I loved my work for its own sake. It gave me a rush of pleasure to do the things I did. If I’d grown up free under my parents, I think I would have turned out very much the same as I am right now. Just without this lovely decoration.” She raised her chin and touched her collar. “I might never know, but I think I would have, and I don’t really want to change who I am. I’m happy in my life, but… I also want to do things on my own. Does that make even a little sense, mistress?” Diana cocked her head and fluttered her eyes with a kind of rapid urgency.

“More than you know, Diana.” Nua empathized and squeezed her servant’s hand, “All that sounds like you want to go. So do you, or not? I have things to do, so make your point.”

“One more question… is there a way you can be… comfortable, trusting me even if you take this off?” Diana drew one hand up and tugged on the collar as if to remove it herself.

“Why?” Nua narrowed her eyes as she asked.

“Because I want to be free… but I also want you to know that it isn’t just gratitude that bonds me to you. I want to help you still… so I want… a compromise.” Diana said suddenly, and Nua leaned back with reticence.

“I don’t usually compromise.” The wood elf replied.

Diana gradually sank down to her knees in supplication. “I know, especially with your property. But hear me out. Set me free, let me sell the estate you give to me and use the funds to buy a proper title in Komestra. Formally adopt me into your house as a daughter. Then offer me to Prince Yanlim as a bride to cement the bond between you and your cities. I will always be your advocate there, and I will warn you of any potential threats. I swear it… it’s not unheard of for someone of value to be adopted to add value to a household and eliminate a potential clash…”

“It’s probably not commonly done with slaves, however.” Nua suggested pointedly. “Prince Yanlim will definitely know who you are.”

“Yes, my lady, but I ‘am’ of a noble Komestran bloodline, I just need my family’s title officially returned to me. The sum I should be able to get from selling Kaiji’s home should be enough for that, and it will no doubt draw another rich and useful noble to you as well. I swear, I will always serve the House of Aiwenor. I will prove I don’t need a collar for that.” Diana said with savage conviction and a steel gaze upward into the ocean blue of her mistress’s unwavering eyes.

Nua sympathetically took a hand away and put it to the dark, silky hair and began to stroke the woman’s head. “I did make Yanlim a brother, and became his sister… but then again, he killed his own cousin, and his cousin’s children. Sado was the dearest friend of Rasgen, and yet Rasgen destroyed his city and offered to marry me. He is observant, I’m sure he worked out or learned that Sado was in love with me, and even if he didn’t? He loved Sobella and let her die, and he loved Lodira and let her end up as a slave. A peasant I enriched, let me walk here with nothing because I couldn’t pay him on the spot. Do you really think it a wonder I don’t trust anyone I don’t own, Diana?”

“Isn’t there a curse or something you could use to kill me if I betray you, but that would otherwise let me live a normal life?” Diana asked, slowly hanging her head as one possibility after another was closed off when Nua shook her head.

“This isn’t a fairy tale where there just so happens to be just the right thing to solve the problem. Any curse I laid on you, would slowly kill you in pain, or drive you mad. You have been loyal, and those are both too uncertain about how long they would take.” Nua replied patiently, and then stopped her stroking.

“Your child.” Nua stated immediately.

“Mistress?” Diana asked, utterly lost, “I have no children.”

“I will give you your freedom, restore your title, adopt you as my daughter to seal the bond, and offer you out as a royal bride, the daughter of the Prince of Komestra, to Prince Yanlim of Hanak’sen. And after you birth your first child, and when they are old enough, you will send them to Komestra.” Nua said it with the gravity it deserved, and Diana understood immediately.

“A hostage.” Diana stated in a hushed whisper.

Nua’s answer was frank and without mercy. “Yes. Before the empire rose, it was a very common practice in some parts of it all, a great emperor took hostages among the sons and daughters of the nobles he elevated. We will do that here. If the time comes and you refuse, I will take that to be your betrayal, and I will not wait for another.”

Diana took that in, and Nua put a finger and placed it under her chin, turning the beautiful face upward to look at her again. “Remember, Diana. This is about more than just Komestra and your people. My aim is to be Empress. Trust is good, control is better. Don’t think the two can’t coexist. I love you all, my devoted servants, I will bleed to keep you safe or to avenge you if you’re hurt. But there are far, far too many lives at stake to put total faith even in anyone who loves me. Even Priceless gave in, to try to spare Kaiji pain. You don’t have to take this offer. My original one stands. Stay here at my feet in my service? Or I set you free to live in wealth and comfort away from me for the rest of your life. Make your choice, Diana, as I said, I have things to do.”

Diana slowly rose to her feet again, and placed Nua’s left hand over her belly. Pressing Nua’s palm there, she said, “In the third year of my child’s life, I will offer them to the house of my mother to teach and to care for. I will be faithful to you, I will be loyal to you, and you will never have reason to doubt me. When the Aiwenorian Empire has taken every city and you are Empress, will you give them back… mother?”

Nua kissed Diana’s forehead. “Yes. That will be proof enough… my daughter. Now go see Kaiji, explain what needs to happen. Once I am crowned in Komestra, ennobling you and adopting you formally will be my first act. But… you will be set free before we leave this city. In a few days, I will no longer be your mistress.”

Diana gave a winsome smile, “That will not stop me from working diligently for our house.”

Shi sat at the table and shifted about left and right on her seat. She picked at the silk garment she wore that Teacher gave her after their last meat making. ‘It’s so soft, so smooth, but still weird to be like this… and to sit on this stuff.’ She shrugged, her mouth was filling with saliva as the smell in the air drew stronger as the source grew closer. Three other seats were occupied around her a moment later. ‘Yay, my talkmates.’ She thought and imitated their facial expressions back at them.

Their lips were turned up in smiles, out of all of them, Veema made it the most, but the white haired twins, Lenah and Straen had begun to do it as well, more and more often. Especially after their crawlmaker… the ‘mistress’ of the house had come back the day before.

The room in which they sat was not part of the common dining hall shared by those she’d come to understand were slaves. It was relatively small, and their food, unlike with the others, was brought to them directly by one of the many maids. Shi couldn’t keep herself from a cockeyed look whenever she saw one of the funny black and white dressed people doing some incomprehensible task. ‘Why do they wave feathers on sticks at things?’ She hadn’t asked that question yet. ‘I want to figure these things out myself… you should never ask a crawlmaker too many questions.’ The sage advice of an old breeder who had seen as many as thirty-five cullings before he went to heaven, came back to mind again.

The smell was just overhead, and four little heads craned their necks to look up as a maid wearing a little white cap stood over them, she moved her right hand up and down briefly. “Biscuits.” She said, then did the same with her left and said, “Bacon.” And then laid down the tray in each hand among the four.

She left and closed the door behind her, and a moment later another came in bearing a ceramic jug of milk and cups for each.

Four sets of hands went for the biscuits and bacon, and Shi asked her talkmates, “How come we don’t eat with the others anymore, we still go to school with them?”

“Teacher says it’s because we’re special.” Veema preened a bit, raising her nose up into the air and took an emphatic bite of biscuit and crispy bacon. “They’re going to grow up, same as we are, but ‘they’ are just going to do laundry, make food, clean things for… like till they’re real old.”

“Is meatmaking really that special?” Shi asked before muffling her voice by sucking on a strip of bacon before she gave into the temptation to bite down on it.

“Meat…?” Lenah began.

“Making?” Straen finished the word and traded a confused look.

“With the cutting and stabbing, what we did to that fat meat Teacher tied down, what we did to that one she had dangling from a tree, all that?” Shi clarified.

“That’s ‘Killing’ Shi. ‘Kil-ling.” Veema said the word slowly, “We’re not eating them.”

“Teacher does.” Shi pointed out when she reached for the jug.

“Into the cup this time, please. Then pass me the jug.” Straen said with a wink, prompting Shi to blush.

“Not my fault I didn’t know what the little empty things were for…” She groused a bit and the blue haired girl poured a cup, then passed the jug.

Nobody gave her a hard time of it, having come to accept that she didn’t have a life like their own.

“So maybe it does count, and it does have a nice ring to it… ‘Meat-making’.” Lenah said as a sort of peace offering.

“I guess.” Veema gave a shrug, “But yeah, it is kinda special,” she looked over to Shi, “we get to work directly for the Lady Aiwenor when we get older. Everybody else will either work for my mom or Kaiji. We have to learn to read and write and things but… when we get older…?”

Shi pondered that in silence, “I think I get it. They don’t want us getting too close to the meat we’re going to make…”

Three palms slapped against their own faces. “No… Shi. Solution isn’t going to eat them, and we’re not going to kill them.” Veema explained slowly.

“Remember how we went out in the baskets and to that place in the woods?” Lenah ventured to explain to a quietly nodding Shi.

“Well, there are lots of places in the world, like you took a long time to get here, so did we. There are even other cities, stonepens, like this. I don’t know how many, maybe like ten or even twenty? Who knows? But some of those have people Mistress doesn’t like. We make them to be meat. Or… we will.”

Shi brightened. “I get it.”

A collective sigh of relief was echoed by her talkmates. “So we don’t eat with them, because… meatmakers don’t eat with meathelpers.” She tentatively asked the question, and unsure of what else to say, her three companions simply nodded along.

“I guess so.” Lenah said, “You’re all more fun anyway.”

Shi grinned, “As long as you don’t mind when I win again.”

Veema snapped down on a bite of bacon. “Next time, Shi, next time.” And when she put her hand on the blue haired girl’s shoulder and squeezed, to her surprise, the flesh felt tougher, both her own, and that of her sister in training.