Free Trade

[Stella]

The slave woman had gone, and Stella was trapped once more in a world she had long despised, a place of torture and despair, a place she found a new hope of escaping. The hope was a dim one, something she could extinguish easily if she thought about it enough, but she didn't have time to think about it now.

She was caught in a room with a man she had never met before, the Supervisor who had claimed to show some medical expertise when they had brought Suhkra to him. He had tan, sweaty skin and was wearing a sleeveless leather shirt and cowhide pants. Across his dark-eyed face he had a deep frown creasing his jaw, and he was looking at Stella like she had done something horribly wrong. If the girl had been normal, she would have felt fear, and she would have been afraid that the man had discovered her little secret conversation in the washroom. Instead, she felt nothing. She stared blankly and shoved the secret plan under the rug expertly, frowning equally hard at the man.

"What did you do?"
Confusion traced its way across her features and Stella looked at him like he was the crazy one. She hadn't done anything, to her knowledge, at least not at the manor. "I didn't do nothin'," she said, truthfully. "Other than fuck some arsehole like I was told," she hissed, like a rattlesnake cornered against a wall, coiling and spitting.

"Shut up!" The man took a thick step toward her and struck her face hard with the back of his hand. It left a stinging red welt. "You did something to piss off Adomankh's friend, you must have, it's always you!" He looked like he was struggling now when she looked up from the strike at his face. It was like he was the one who was hurting, like he was the one in that room on a bed. "You're the only name ever mentioned when shit like this goes down, so I know better. It was you, you did this to her," he said, like it was a fact of life that she'd never be able to change.

"I didn't. I did not, didn't do nothin'," she hissed back. He hit her again, harder.
There was a moment of silence that passed between them, and the only thing she could feel was the heat of his rage emanating, almost like he cared. She brushed her stinging cheek with her fingers and looked back to him again, her brow furrowed and her hair in her face. Stella pushed the hair away so that he could look at the welt he had created, and she gave him a small, morbid smile. "She's not dead, at leas'," she said.

"Of course she's not dead. Don't be stupid," he said. He looked almost worried.
"So let's ask you this: why do ya care?"
She shouldn't have said it. He grabbed her by her shoulders and threw her against the wall. She hit her head on the off-white brick and her head rattled and her ears were ringing. Stella's knees buckled from under her and she grabbed the back of her head with her palm, resting it against the wall and squeezing her eyes closed. She opened them slightly. He was standing in front of the door so she couldn't leave. Her vision was blurry, and the light in the room hurt, so she stared at his sandals.
"You like 'er. I get it. Ya hoped she'd be all righ' so you could have her later. That it?" He kicked her in the ribs. She flattened against the floor and moaned.
"Yu're pathetic," she whispered to him, "just like all the others. Ya like one pretty face too much, so you ruin another. Tha's good. Ruin mine. Always the girl's fault righ'?" He slapped something really hard against the back of her leg. It sounded like a belt, felt like one too. They always hit in multiple places to avoid breaking bones and making visible bruises. The Supervisors never forgot that they always needed the girls to work.

"Adomankh cut off his thumb, ya know," she could scarcely breathe. He was hitting her, all over, and it hurt, and she couldn't breathe. She coughed. "Jutaria had it. Prolly brought it to Jamil hisself."

He stopped. "Who?"
"The bloke who did it, the fat one," she said. She couldn't help but wonder then who this Supervisor was, and why he seemed to have such an affinity for Suhkra. Clearly he was looking for somebody to blame, and the easiest person to blame was her. In fact it was almost always Stella's fault, so she probably would have done the same thing in his shoes.
She made a note to kill him when all this was over.

"Go to sleep, Stella. You'll need your strength to face Mr. Jamil," he said, and Stella knew that he had taken her bait. He picked up her head and hit just the right part of it against the cement floor.
She slept.

[Solana]

If it was not for the nerves that hummed and fluttered within Solana's mind, she might have found the work to be soothing in its repetitive certainty. Math always had been one of the staples of her job, balancing reports and overlooking expenditures. As time had passed, she had relegated much of it to other servants, to other underlings whose sole purpose was to stand around taking her orders that her duties might become easier, smoother. Solana had been good at her job. She took pride in doing things well, and in the knowledge that her perfection was noticed, and had even impressed some of her betters.

Solana never did anything less than what she was capable of. Not unless she had a plan in mind. As she hunched over her small station (for she would not call what she labored over a desk), there were no plans in her mind. Finally, after all of her years and conniving, her mind was emptied of all but the sick sweet sensation in her gut that told her she had to do everything in her power to please this man. Pleasing him was all that mattered.

Deep down, the coil stirred. She ignored it, pushed it down, buried it.

They took a break for lunch at Kamesh's word, though her food was nothing sumptuous. His food stirred her senses, and she realized that she was indeed hungry. She ate what passed for her food without complaint, and curved away from Kamesh. He didn't seem to notice. He ignored her as she might have ignored a cowering dog in the corner, though truth be told she would have had the dog removed from her presence.

Eventually her tasks were completed, and she waited for awhile until Kamesh noticed that she wasn't working, hadn't been working, but was sitting and dithering like a naughty child.

"Are you wasting my time?" His voice was the sort of unpleasant casual that Solana had learned to fear.

"I'm -- I finished." She almost fell over herself in her haste to gather up the receipts and their bamboo framed case, and stood with them in her arms. Her body was more tired than she'd realized, and she wondered how long they'd been in that room. She was hungry again. It was so very odd. Her past life waited for her behind her eyelids, like a dream. She blinked it away.

"Come here."

She brought forward the case and its contents, flinching when he sighed as if she had somehow created more work for him by her completion of his request. She stood as he flipped through, the lamplights flickering around them. The only sound was their quiet breathing and the dry rasp of the pages as he moved through them with an exactness that spoke of practice and skill. She'd underestimated him.

She bowed her head. Time passed as he went through all of her work page by page, the care with which he studied the work evidence to how little trust he placed in her. When he stood and dropped the whole weight of them down into the case, she flinched and almost took a step back. Rather, she did, a second later, when he looked up at her. She dropped her eyes in response.

"I find no fault with your figures, and your hand is neat. However, it is clear that you are used to working with a different system, and that I will have to train you in the notations I use."

The tone he used made it very clear that she should feel bad for not having come into the room with this knowledge intact. She studied the floor. Again.

"Hameh has requested you to continue with the market trips. I was in mind to refuse, but it seems you gossip less on the trip. She was insistent. Do you want to go?"

The memory of Stella was like something that had once been told to her. A story for another life.

"No."

"You will come here tomorrow morning, and we will spend that time acquainting you with the system of notations we use for Adomankh's estates. I trust it will not take you long to learn such a thing? I do not like it when my time is wasted."

She was a fool. A coward. A fake. Solana held her silence, and her breath, and felt the betrayal of her body as a prickling heat rushed up behind her eyes. Was this truly what she was reduced to? Being thankful to be so lightly insulted, hoping that the insults would be the extent of it? The weight of his stare upon her, real or imagined, burned her forehead. She dipped her head further forward, trying to dislodge it.

"At the midday break you will accompany Hameh to the market and do as she bids. She will see to it you are taken care of. I despise slaves that wither in the heat. See to it you receive enough sustenance. Your quivering is . . . distasteful. Once you have come back from your market trip, you will return to me and I will give you your task to complete. I cannot spend my whole day looking over your shoulder. I have my own work to see to. Do you understand me? Look at me."

Solana looked up. Her lower lip was trembling. Souls, how she hated herself.

"What you want and don't want do not matter to me." He spoke slowly, and he caught and held her eyes. She hated herself so much. "If I ask you what you want, your job is to ask me what I want of you. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"You are dismissed. See to it you are fed and watered, and do not be late."

Solana dipped into a curtsey that caused his lips to curl, and she fled. The day had passed while she'd been sequestered in that hot, dry room, and she couldn't taste what passed for food between her lips. She ignored the other slaves and was ignored in return, though she knew as she cowered alone that they whispered about her. She knew all about that. When she finally made it back to the room she shared with others, she found that sleep did not come so easily. What if Stella found her? Souls, what if Stella told anyone of what they'd spoken of in that dingy, unclean washroom? Would she be whipped again? She couldn't be whipped again. She just couldn't.

Sleep was a long time coming.

The next morning, she did exactly what Kamesh had asked of her. She ate quickly at dawn's break, managed her ablutions. She arrived before Kamesh and as he trained her she found focusing on the task to be difficult. He reprimanded her once, twice, and on the third time told her in disgust that if she could not be an apt pupil he would have her sent to the laborer's camp where he was sure the strain of the work would kill her. Focusing came a little easier after that.

Her belly was roiling and gnawing at her by the time Hameh came to take her. The food was like ash. The day was regrettably nice outside, and the air fresh and heavy with moisture. Her stomach made it clear that the food had been unwelcome, and threatened to spill it back up her throat and out her mouth.

She was a coward.

She hoped she never laid eyes on Stella ever again.

[Stella]

Ever since her last encounter with Master Jamil, Stella had remained almost completely silent to all but her clientele. Even she herself had trouble telling whether it was out of fear, or whether she had merely planned it from the beginning, to lull him and the others into a sense of false security. They relaxed around her when she didn't speak, when she didn't act out. They slowly let down their guard. In the room where the Supervisor had cornered her over Suhkra's decimated body, Stella had accidentally let loose. She had done something very dangerous for herself, and for the plan hatched with the slave. She feared, quite suddenly, that Jamil was onto her vixen ways.

When she opened her eyes she was still lying in the corner of the room, a bit of her blood spattered lightly on the off-white wall. The light in the room was on, and it blinded her. She put her hand in front of her eyes, squinting through the light and blurry vision. There were several shapes in the room that she couldn't quite make out. They appeared to be men, as they were too tall and their clothes were too many and too dark to be tailored for women. Stella tried to count the men. Three.

Still wearing her soiled clothing from the manor, Stella remained curled over defensively on the hard floor. She flitted her eyes briefly to the mat in the middle of the room, the Setkhantos excuse for a bed. Stella had been raped before, many times. Rape would never cease to terrify her. Memories of the werewolves came back to her, and she could smell blood in her nose, though there was none.
A familiar clicking sound rattled against her ears, the tongue of Cristophe Jamil causing it. Tsk, tsk, tsk. Stella lowered her head and her eyes, looking at his black boots, just to be sure that it was indeed the Master of the brothel. Beside the boots she could see the sandals of the man who had cornered her. The other feet were also sandals, and unfamiliar.

"Zasumba says it was lovely Stella that ruined the little outing tonight to see our dear friend Adomankh," said Cristophe Jamil in his smooth, eerie voice. He was wearing, from what she could see through her tangled hair, black dress pants. They were something she only saw people of mainland Eyropa wear. Rich people, obviously.
"What do you think, Ji?" asked Jamil to the strange pair of sandals.
"What do.. I think? I..--"
"Perhaps you're right, Ji. One should always be cautious to believe rumors without evidence," said the Master. They stood over her, jury and judge, as she waited for a verdict. They were none-the-wiser about Stella's talk with the slave in the washroom, apparently. That was really all she cared about.

Zasumba piped up; Stella could see his sandals turn to Jamil. "Master, she must have done it," he said.
"And why must she have done it?" asked Jamil. Stella could not believe her ears. Was he defending her?
"Because it's always her! What if Suh-- what if the girl dies?!"
"Oh get a grip on yourself man. It's only a bit of rectal hemorrhaging, you idiot." There was a pause in their conversation, and Jamil pulled something out of his pocket. Stella could hear the fussing of leather and metal. "What if Stella were to die on your panicked word, eh? What would happen then?"
The pair were silent.
"What would happen... is that I would lose money," said Jamil, "And I don't like losing money." He took a step closer to Zasumba, who tried to take a step backward but was held back from doing so for some reason. He made a choking noise, and breathed quickly, and heavily. "You know that I don't need a knife to do this, Zasumba," Jamil spoke in a whisper. Stella strained to hear. He said something else that she did not catch.

Then Stella gasped and scrambled into another corner as a huge weight was sent flying into the wall opposite the door. Zasumba's body hit the mat on the floor, and some part of him was bleeding. The brick itself on the wall had broken off in places and was dented inward; the force it would have taken to do such a thing was incredible. Stella looked at the face of Jamil through her hair.

"Don't waste my time with your brotherly worries," said Jamil. He stared at the mess that he had made with no emotion apparent on his pale, very pale, face. His hair was salt and pepper, and straight. He wore it in a low ponytail. His brow was dark, and thick. Suddenly he shot a look to Stella and she winced at his eyes, looking away. She heard the billow of his coat and the sandals of Ji before the door closed behind them.

When she exited the room she realized it was very early morning; the sky was still dark.
Suddenly everything made sense.

After that day, Stella resumed her low profile. She took clients to back rooms and pleasured them as she should have, teasing them with violence the way they liked, but never actually hurting them. Some of the Supervisors were always looking for something to be out of place. Stella suspected that they believed Zasumba's injuries were her fault. If she were them, she would have merely been thankful that the man wasn't dead. She wondered if they knew about their master. She wondered if she was even right.

The girls asked her questions about the second encounter with Jamil. Many of them believed him to be either extremely ugly or extremely handsome, that he was some sort of mutant and that was why they never saw his face. What didn't make sense to Stella was why the Master had chosen to make a point out of Zasumba in front of her. Why had he allowed his face to be revealed? She suspected, stupidly, a slip up on his part.

Stella was excited on market day. The information she carried was vital to hatching a proper plan. She knew that the slave would be pleased about it. Stella went once again with Lyla to the marketplace. Each time they went, they were clothed rather ridiculously in tiny outfits that served as free advertising for Jamil's Tavern. Today, Stella was wearing what a strange person might call a dress with two holes cut in it for her breasts to freely roam. Her nipples had strange tribal patterns painted on top of them, as if to mask the fact that they were showing. The hem of the burgundy dress was slanted and rose to the top of her thigh. Lyla, because she was doing the buying, was dressed more modestly. She was wearing an East Eyropan style of dress that accentuated her decolletage and the roundness of her hips. In short, far less skin was showing. Stella was used to such treatment. The outfit was only aggravating due to the size of her breasts.

They stopped at several fruit stands, and then went to buy bread. At last, Stella found an opening. Lyla wanted only the freshest meat from the butcher, and was required to step inside. The butcher conveniently asked for the erotically dressed whore to stay behind while Lyla went in. Saved by the outfit. Stella hated irony.

The air was thick with a pleasant moisture and even a light breeze, making the heat of the day bearable for once. Stella took the opportunity the butcher had given her and hunted for the slave. It was before noon, but it was still guesswork where the girl would be, or if she would even be there. Stella wandered the market for five minutes, fluttering around a mango stand and poking behind a woman selling beads. Then, she spotted her.

The slave's face looked pale, even from far away. She appeared sickly and shaky, disturbed and anxious. Stella wondered what Adomankh had done to her, wondered what she had seen. Stella pretended to look through a collection of jade jewelry, standing in plain view of the slave and staring at her every so often.

[Solana]

There was a strangeness to how easy it was to let Hameh decide everything. There had been a time when Solana had felt only derision for the slaves who kept their eyes down, for the servants whose worth was measured in their ability to remain unnoticed. Had she thought them so alien? Perhaps it wasn't best to say she understood them, but there was the faintest tie of kinship to what they must have felt. Stranger still, she felt no revulsion at the thought. No, it was best to drift as a leaf upon the water, and feel things only at a distant remove.

Trailing Hameh through the market was like a gentle breeze. Solana kept her eyes downcast, and her bearing docile and subservient. Do not notice me, she tried to say with her body. I am nothing. Even so, she felt strangely faint, and had a hard time keeping the trembling of her fingers still.

It was the will of the Changers that out of the mass of bodies, Solana happened to look up and catch sight of Stella. She looked away, quick, her heart slamming vicious and alive against her ribcage. Her mouth went dry. The lashes were well remembered, and there was a skittering, rushing sort of fearful wonderment at what the punishment might be if she was discovered to be plotting against her masters. She could have fainted at the thought.

"What's this, girl?" Hameh snapped at Solana. She eyed the younger woman as if Solana was some prohibitively expensive flower that had wilted before it could be enjoyed enough to compensate its cost. That's all Solana was, she knew. A number. Assigned worth. An expenditure. A resource.

Solana looked at Hameh, wordless and flinching as if Hameh had lifted her hand rather than her voice.

"You Corezans, you're all the same. Can't take a bit of heat. Here then, take a ladle and go stand in the shade for a few minutes. It'll be my head if your worthless hide drops. But mind you, best you get over your little bouts. I'll not have useless slaves sharing my space, and mark me, I'll be informing Kamesh."

Solana paled. "N-no, I'll -- "

Hameh frowned. "Get you gone, girl, or I'll see a switch to your backside. But dare you not tarry, or I'll see it worse."

Caught, Solana could only hesitate and peer at Hameh for the briefest moment. The woman meant her words. Off to the shade she moved, and the entire way she cursed the nearness it put her to Stella. Had the other girl noticed her? Maybe if Solana slunk over to the side -- she darted the briefest of glances towards Stella, and found that she'd caught the other slave's eye. Changers. She could leave still, she thought. Pretend she hadn't seen the other? But no, no -- what if that angered Stella? What if Stella . . . what if she told? Solana felt her breath catch, and then speed. Facing that possibility, she kept her steps even and steady, heading nearer and nearer the girl.

But even so, she didn't go straight up to the other slave. That would be suspicious, even if Solana wanted to have their little chat. Instead, she idled nearby, fanning herself and sipping from the ladle Hameh had afforded her out of the bucket they'd be bringing back to the estate (and, Solana was sure Hameh had ordered her to draw it from the well early so Solana would be forced to carry it the entire day). Hoping perhaps Stella had a change of heart as well, Solana did not speak. Instead, she waited.

[Stella]

The slave was quite agitated. Stella figured that she had been through a rough time, but found it a bit difficult to empathize considering all that had happened in her lifetime. Still, her first rape had been a difficult one, and Stella knew that even ugly women could easily have had it happen to them. It had been horrible. She knew the feeling of shame and defeat well, and those thoughts brought something like sympathy from her normally hardened eyes.

The slave, still nameless, moved into the shade carrying a ladle of water with her. Stella narrowed her eyes, suspecting something very off about her. She wondered if it was just rape, or something more. She looked unsure, worried. Stella thought she spotted a few grey hairs she hadn't seen before.

Drifting backward into the shade as well, Stella stared at her hands, perfectly comfortable in her outrageously revealing outfit.
"What the shit is wrong with you, eh?" She hissed a whisper. "I ain't have much time."

[Solana]

Solana flinched. Her eyes darted back and forth: towards Stella and away. "R-report," she said. Anything to get the girl to go away.

[Stella]

Stella gave the slave an expectant glare, rolling her eyes as a stuttered command came out of her chapped lips. Whatever had happened to her had clearly been some traumatic event, and Stella didn't give a rat's ass. She shoved at the slave forcefully. Someone who passed them looked at Stella, but he was male, and almost certainly looking at her tits and ass and not her questionable behavior.
"Yeh're fine," she snapped.

"Anyway," she continued, putting a strong hand on her hip, "I got us dirt on Christophe Jamil." Stella was not certain how they were going to use it to their advantage, but she knew that it was good dirt, at least. She looked left, and right, and leaned in close before speaking very softly.
"He's a vampire."

[Solana]

Instinct made Solana look to the threat, to Stella, as she stumbled sideways.

You're fine.

That had been what Stella had said. You're fine? You're fine. What was fine? The laugh started in her throat, and she didn't hear what Stella had said at first. Because no, everything was not fine and had never been fine. Solana had seen the world through a thin layer of white lace, and now it was gone. Ripped away. Torn to shreds. The world could never be the same, and Solana --

she'd looked away from Stella as she indulged herself in her sinking thoughts, but some part of her brain, of the part of her that eavesdropped almost without conscious effort, caught the last three words. Her eyes snapped up.

"Excuse me?"

[Stella]

"A vampire. Yeh knaw, the kind that drink blood and hates garlic and all tha'." Her tone was almost giddy. The idea of Jamil being a vampire terrified her, a bit, but honestly she was more scared of werewolves than those unholy dead beasts.

"It all makes sense noaw, him not bein' around. Shadowy and tha'," she murmured. "I saw him. I saw him throw a full grown man across a room, like he was a cabbage." She realized too late that the word 'cabbage' was not really a good summary of the situation. She had never been gifted with words.

[Solana]

Where will had ceased to function, training took over. The choices of words that fluttered around 'vampire' were not something Solana even bothered to notice. "Are you sure?" Her voice dropped to match Stella's. "I need you to be sure."

The days spent tallying numbers and reading through the villa expenses, through the financial reports of a project that, she was sure, was none of her damned business suddenly came to mind. Years of honing predatory instincts came to the fore, and her mind began to churn.

[Stella]

"To be sure I'd have to catch him.. ergh.." She thought about the right word for a moment, making faces at herself. "Feeding." Then she giggled, like the situation was funny. That she was working under the rule of a vampire didn't scare her at all. If anything she found it to be exciting, something different from her regular, dull existence. The idea of a vampire was violent and cruel and interesting, not disturbing the way that cruel human men were. That, and Jamil was what she might call a charming creature, though she hadn't been attracted to a man in years.

"But his face, the paleness... Like death, and the strength of ten men.. or more.." she drifted off, her eyes shining like she had a case of puppy love.

[Solana]

Wrenched away from the drudgery her life had become, Solana was forced to look at Stella. Really look at her. What she saw wasn't reassuring. It was a necessary thing for spies to be focused, and able to seek out the answers their Spymistress needed. Those questions roared out of the pit she had buried them in, and for a moment all Solana could do was stare at Stella. It passed. "I need you to get into a position to find out why he is running that brothel, and what other businesses, if any, he owns."

The words were out of her mouth before she could take them back.

[Stella]

Stella stared at the nameless slave like she had gone insane. The whore had always known from when they had spoken in the washroom that she would eventually need to step up to the plate and find a way to gather information reliably. Spying on Christophe Jamil was no easy task. Even the Supervisors were not normally in the loop, from her understanding of the situation. Christophe so rarely showed his face around the brothel, even at night, that Stella wondered who he told about these things if anyone at all. So, when the slave told Stella that she would have to not only find this position of knowledge, but assume it, she frowned.

"I don' even knaw where teh start. I mean, he's a vampire," she repeated. Normally, Stella would attempt to assume the role of trusted concubine. Men had a habit of letting their guard down when they thought she was only a whore (which she was) and did not seem to mind sharing private information around her. However, Stella didn't even know if Jamil had any attraction to women at all, being inhuman himself. Taking the role of a Supervisor could take years, and even if she could successfully get such a position, female Supervisors were never as powerful as males, and never found as trustworthy.
"Do they even like girls?" She asked, knowing full well that the slave couldn't possibly have any idea. She was a slave. Nothing more.

[Solana]

"Will you do it, or won't you?" Solana's expression was a tizzy of browbeaten stress, not an uncommon one for a slave. Her tone, however, was almost entirely irritation.

It was almost as if she was a passenger in her own mind, watching the scene unfold with a curious sense of dread and horror.

[Stella]

"Uh," she hesitated. Stella did not care that the slave was annoyed with her; Stella was more concerned about her ability, or lack thereof, to assume the role of concubine in Christophe Jamil's life. He had taken her side once, and forced the contents of her stomach once. His opinion of her then must have been even, she figured.

"Yeees," she said. There was doubt there, obvious from the length of her 'yes,' but Stella believed that she might be able to do it.

But something picked at her. Who was this slave? This was no usual farm girl, taken to pay off her father's debts, too ugly for the sex trade. This was someone with a purpose. "Who exactly are yew?"