Slave Empire III - The Shrike (29 page)

“What do you
mean?” she asked.

“My last owner.
She trusted me. She asked me to help her write her will. I made a
small change that she didn’t notice. I changed ‘son’ to ‘slave’.
After she died, I sold her property on auction the next day. I went
straight to the spaceport and bought the first ship that was for
sale and got the hell off that world before her son found out. He
lived a long way away, luckily. I don’t know how I did it, though.
I was terrified. If I’d been caught, they’d have put me to death in
some horrible way. Maybe in a torture pit, or an arena. I stayed
here until the food ran out. I almost didn’t get up the courage to
leave at all. I even dug myself a grave. I’d rather have died free
than risk being enslaved again. My collar was still active, you
see. It was a beacon.”

He sighed.
“Anyway, I did leave, although I was pretty thin by then. I went to
a smuggler world, where I bought a deactivation with the rest of
the old woman’s money. They’re hard to get, and it’s very,
very
dangerous. If I hadn’t been wearing the mask… They
probably assumed I was worthless, especially since I was so thin,
so they’d make more money out of the deactivation. Of course, it
helped that I had a laser pointed at them the whole time. Then I
was free, although I didn’t feel free. It took quite a few months
to convince myself of that. The rest you know.”

Rayne stared at
the table, numbness nibbling at her mind.

“Hey, are you
all right?” he asked.

She looked up,
forcing a smile. “Yeah.”

“I shouldn’t
tell you about this shit, sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.
Maybe it’s being back here. The circumstances are a bit different,
though.”

“I thought she
freed you.”

“Who, that old
bag?” He snorted. “She wasn’t as bad as most of my owners, but she
wasn’t a saint.”

“So… no one
helped you. You did it all by yourself.”

He nodded. “No
one will help a slave, except another slave.”

“But… you said
you changed ‘son’ to ‘slave’, so you inherited her property. If
people accepted that, it must have happened before, or been legal,
at least.”

“I wasn’t her
heir. I was her executor. She left all her property to charity. She
hated her son, that’s why she made him executor. It’s not unusual
for a slave to be put in charge of his master’s, or mistress’
funds. That’s a different type of slave, though. Vidan was one.
They’re skilled slaves, trained in some useful profession, like
accountancy or lawyering. They save their owners a tonne of money.
They’re well treated, so they don’t betray their owners. If they
do, they pay the price, so they don’t dare.”

“You told me
she left all her property to you,” she said.

He shrugged.
“It was easier than telling you that whole story. What’s the
difference?”

“I thought at
least one free person had helped you.”

“Oh, I see. No,
I’m afraid not. She wanted me auctioned and my proceeds donated to
charity. I changed that bit, too.”

Rayne sighed.
“I’m glad you told me.”

“Yeah, it was a
fun story, hey? Now you have those shitty images, too.”

“If it helps me
to understand you, I want to know about it.”

“I’m really not
that complicated. If you want to know something, just ask me.”

She shook her
head. “You don’t like to talk about your past.”

“Some things I
dislike talking about more than others, and some things I won’t
talk about at all. There are some things I’m okay with, though.
This is one of them. How did it help you to understand me?”

“Well, it
didn’t, actually. I thought I knew why you don’t hate freemen,
because one helped you, but now I don’t.”

“Ah. Nope,
that’s not it. It’s because I’ve collared so many of them. There’s
something about turning a slaver into a slave that’s quite
refreshing for an ex-slave.”

Rayne smiled,
her gloom lifting a little. “You do it personally?”

“I have done.
Not so much anymore. The novelty’s worn off a bit. Now I let others
do it. It helps them, too, I reckon.”

“You would
know. And now I understand why you want the freemen gone from
Rimon. Especially Rimon.”

“Yeah,” he
said. “This is the foundation planet. The core of the Empire.”

“I’m surprised
you don’t make it your headquarters. Why Ironia?”

“Ironia is the
second planet I colonised. It’s less populated, and far from any of
the others. Most of my enemies know it’s my base, so it’s heavily
defended. I wouldn’t want to endanger the people on Rimon.”

“Has Ironia
ever been attacked?” she asked.

“Yes. A slaver
did, once, when I had a lot fewer warships. At that stage, I had
thirty-three, and he had over forty. The difference was his
captains worked for money, mine fought for their freedom. He
lost.”

Rayne got the
impression that speaking about his past, even the triumphs in it,
was not helping his mood. A lot of ex-slaves had died in that
battle, she guessed. Silence reigned for several minutes, and then
she asked, “So, do you think your speech stopped the unrest? Will
the freemen leave now?”

“Yes. Now that
I’ve told my people to cast out the freemen, they’ll do it
themselves.”

“Because you
told them to,” she said.

“Yes. Half of
those people would jump out of an airlock without hesitation if I
told them to, and the other half would only stop to ask why before
they did it. If I had told them to kill the freemen, they’d have
done it right there, on the spot. The freemen know it, so they
won’t start any more trouble.”

“Because your
people love you.”

Tarke lunged
forward and brought his fist down on the table with a terrific
bang, cracking the crystal top. “Because they’re
slaves
!”

Rayne almost
jumped out of her skin, and gasped in shock, staring at him. “But…
you freed them.” Her voice trembled.

“They’re still
slaves, here.” He tapped his forehead. “They always will be. It’s
not something you can wash off with soap and water. It’s a
mind-set, a habit, a psychological disorder. They’re trained,
brainwashed, conditioned, call it what you will. It’s not something
you recover from.”

She swallowed
hard. “There used to be slaves on Earth. Some escaped, some were
freed; they lived normal lives.”

“Did they wear
slave collars?”

“No… chains, I
think.”

“That’s the
difference. You can take chains off, and when they fall away, you
know what freedom feels like. When you can never take off the badge
of slavery, you never stop being a slave.”

She was afraid
to ask the question that popped into her head.

He nodded.
“Yes, even me. Even though I was a bad slave, disobedient, insolent
and proud, if my collar was reactivated… I would do as I was told,
to avoid the pain, beatings, and humiliation. My life would cease
to be my own. The
drogtaal
was born a slave. Do you want to
know what he asked me?”

She hesitated.
“Okay.”

“He asked me
what he must do. What I wanted him to do.” He leant back again.
“Because I’m the
Dalreen
. He’s probably asked many freemen
the same question since he came here, and I’m sure some of them
told him to drink water from the gutter or let them piss on
him.”

She raised a
hand to her mouth, sickened. “What did you tell him?”

“Never to ask
anyone that question again. To do whatever he wanted, and be
happy.” He looked away. “And never to grovel again.”

“Will he do
it?”

“Yes, of
course. I am the
Dalreen
! Don’t you see? None of them will
disobey me,
ever
. I can order my captains to tear apart a
Drayconar warship to free you, or die trying, and they won’t
hesitate. The ones who have more independence are the ones who sit
in clubs on places like Dreamish and drink to forget. They won’t
join my crews, because they’re afraid, but then they don’t know
what else to do. But if I ordered them to do it, they would.”

“So you don’t
think it’s because they love you? I mean, didn’t they hate their
masters?”

“No, it is, and
yes, of course they did. That’s not the point. If I told you to
jump out of an airlock, would you?”

She shook her
head. “No.”

“It’s not love
that makes them obey me; it’s the slave mentality. Their love for
me is the reason they’ll never betray me and will die to protect
me. Committing suicide at my command is pure…” He shook his head.
“There isn’t a word for it, but I call it idiocy.”

“And you hate
that.”

He jumped up
and went to stare out of the screen again. “I can never free them.
No matter how hard I try. I can give them a better life, but
they’ll never be truly free. Then we have these arrogant freemen,
who swagger and spit, and probably order their parents around. The
more of them there are, the more harm they do. An ex-slave won’t
take orders from another ex-slave, except me, of course. I’m doing
this for them, too. I have given them an order that most of them
will hate, in order to help them. It will cause them pain to cast
out their children, and I had to do that to them. I’m the only one
who can.” He turned to her. “There are exceptions, like Vidan. He’d
tell me to get stuffed if I told him to jump out of an
airlock.”

“That’s why
he’s your friend. And you don’t have this… slave mentality, do
you?”

“Not like them.
But then, I escaped, and I was never a good slave.”

“They’re
damaged,” she said. “It’s not your fault, or theirs.”

“I know.”

“So there’s no
point in getting upset about it, is there?”

He sighed. “I
just… wish it was different. You know?”

“Yeah.” She
rubbed her arms, still shaken by his attack on the table.

Tarke returned
to sit opposite again. “Did I frighten you?”

“I almost wet
myself.”

He laughed.
“Sorry.”

“Say that like
you mean it.”

“I do mean
it.”

She snorted and
rolled her eyes.

“Ah.” He
lowered his gaze to the table top.

Rather
surprised that her mild flirtation embarrassed him, she changed the
subject. “Vidan thought you were putting yourself in a lot of
danger.”

“He always
does. If he had his way, he’d lock me up in a hermetically sealed
room under fifty metres of concrete and throw away the key.”

She thought
about what she would like to do with him, which involved a very
large bed and many, many uninterrupted hours of passion.

He leant back
and rubbed his face. “Whoa.”

“Hey, stay out
of my mind!”

“You need to
learn to shield your thoughts. You’re almost shouting.”

“That’s not
fair. I can’t create mental shields. I’ve tried many times. Perhaps
there’s a reason for it, because if I’d had them during my battle
with the Envoy, I wouldn’t have been able to defeat him. Now you’re
blaming me for not having any, when you shouldn’t be prying into my
thoughts in the first place.” She stood up. “I’m going back to
Shadowen.”

Tarke rose to
his feet, looking concerned. She commanded the ship to transfer her
up, and the lounge vanished behind a golden haze.

Shadowen’s
cool, dim bridge was a balm of familiarity after the tension of the
flagship and Tarke’s dangerous excursion, and she craved solitude
to sort through her tangled emotions. She hoped he would not
follow, even though a large part of her wanted him to. She longed
to repeat the magical moment they had shared the night before, but
the reaction she had unwittingly triggered afterwards had scared
her. She suspected that it had been a flashback, some horrific
vision, probably of a spinning blade coming at him. The one that
had sliced open his face. Then there were the dreadful implications
of his expertise in the art of seduction, how he had learnt it and
been forced to use it, which did not bear contemplation.

No wonder her
proximity was so hard for him to bear. Was there any aspect of his
psyche that had not been twisted and tainted? She had been such a
blind fool. She had thought her dream had come true, but it was
buried under a mountain of pain, ruined by his horrific past,
unattainable. So close, yet so far out of reach. The fact that he
had not allowed anyone to touch him for fifty-eight years proved
just how much he wanted people to stay away from him, and she did
not blame him. Now he was trying to let her get close to him, but
how much of what he had said was true? He was still hiding stuff,
she was sure.

Becoming
untouchable had been his way of dealing with his nightmarish past,
and it had worked until she had come along. Now he was trying to
force himself to overcome the coping mechanism that had kept him
relatively sane for so long. Clearly that was proving difficult,
and what if it turned out to be impossible? She paced the bridge.
The more she learnt about her strange husband, the more she
realised just how impossible her dream was. She had thought she
could handle it. Now she had serious doubts. The wonderful,
beautiful man she had fallen in love with was unintentionally
breaking her heart. Her throat grew tight, and she closed her eyes
to block out the gloomy bridge with its precious memory.

The soft hum of
an energy shell warned her, and she swung away. He took hold of her
shoulders, turned her face him and enfolded her in his arms. She
wanted to hold him and push him away at the same time, so she did
neither. His gentle compassion was more than she could bear, and
silent, painful tears ran down her cheeks. After several minutes,
he held her away, but she kept her eyes lowered.

“What’s wrong?”
he asked.

Rayne shook her
head and wiped her eyes. Another unpleasant insight had dawned upon
her a little while earlier, too. Tarke was an emperor. Millions
idolised him, and many wanted him dead, and being a part of his
life meant dealing with all of that as well.