Enslaved

“So, Sir Austin-”

“Please, Austin will do.”

Miss Kaully nodded, “Austin, how is your daughter?”

Sir Austin master raised his eyebrow, anger radiating from his tensed fingertips, “My daughter?”

“Yes, I heard she came down with something terrible.”

Sir Austin master scooted forward in his chair, picking up his fork to show it was safe to eat, but not eating himself, “Yes, I’m afraid she must have caught a flu. She has been awfully sick lately, pale and vomiting. I’m sorry, is that too vulgar for the table?”

“No,” MissKaully said. “Not at all. I’m terribly sorry to hear that. Where is she now? Are you keeping her here?”

She reached up with her silk hand to cover her mouth.

“No,” Sir Austin master said, smiling tightly. “We wouldn’t want to submit you to such… unpleasantries. We are keeping her up in one of our many country homes. She quite enjoys the place. She is a lovely girl. She likes to help with the horses and with needs around the house. She cannot stand to do nothing when work is to be done. She will make a powerful merchant some day. Though I keep telling her she mustn't spend too much time with the horses or she’ll soon want to become a country girl.”

The two laughed. Ridiculous, of course. A rich merchant’s brat becoming a country girl.

Geniva stood at the corner of the table, back straight, staring at the far wall, not daring to look straight at the free, and rich frees at that. Not those peasants, only a step up from slaves. Glakas. Snakes. The unfree.

Geniva’s tongue itched. The two halves, freed from each other by a searing knife, not even a knife, just a red hot spatula of metal. It was the Glaka’s mark. Their burden to hold for the rest of their lives. They were snakes, now and forever, just how everyone told them every day, just how the mirror showed them every time.

The slave next to Geniva, a young girl with coal dark skin, the prettiest in the house, the youngest in the house, was dressed in her finest dress. She may be the master’s favorite, but she was also the mistress's least. The mistress had made the master put her up for sale, thought at a much higher price than Geniva’s. Geniva’s skin was pasty and pale, other than where her skin was pink with scars, her nose crooked, her jaw sticking out in an abominable overbite. Geniva was always forced to work in the kitchens or somewhere she’d never be seen. She wasn’t even allowed to work outside, because what if some important lord or lady stopped by and saw her. She was a decent, more than decent, cook after so many years, so she’d been kept longer and longer by each master, but in the beginning, when she was a child, she’d been bought and sold like a hot potato. Her arms were covered with branded numbers and initials crossed out, her current one 9864GA. Nine thousand, eight hundred, and sixty four, Galen Austins. The noble family she was enslaved to. The mighty merchant empire of the Galen Austins had bought her three years ago now, two times the length of any other time she’d spent enslaved to a single family. But that may be ending soon, depending how stingy this Miss Kaully was.

Miss Kaully picked up her spoon and dipped it into her sweet potato soup, slurping it loudly. Sir Austin master stayed quiet as she slurped, forced to refrain from whatever he had opened his mouth to say.

Mis Kaully set down her spoon on her silverware napkin, “Sir Austin, I am a straightforward woman, and am very busy getting ready for the Four Moons Festival, so I will make this simple. I need a star for the fashion exhibition and I hear that you have a very large variety of women Glakas.”

Sir Austin master opened his mouth again, but she cut him off.

“I will make no comment on your choice of slave if you will let me speak. I do not mean to be rude, but as I say, I am very busy and I have little time to discuss.”

The woman picked up her spoon and placed it across her full bowl of soup. Genica rushed forward and picked up the bowl, taking it to the side of the room, where there was a small square door in the wall to pass through dishes. She took the second appetizer to the woman but she shooed Geniva away.

“I need the main course, dear. Did you not hear me?”

Geniva wanted to smack the woman. Dear? She was no dear of hers, a stupid, prudish, uptight, spoiled dickwad. Dear? She was so high above Geniva that the she couldn’t see the laces of her shoes, and yet she dared to take the only dignity slaves get away from Geniva?

But Geniva bowed and carried the appetizer back and took the main course dish, cooked salmon with dill and truffles. It smelled delicious. Geniva hoped the woman would be too busy to eat most of the food, so she could sneak a quick bite. The plate smelled like oils and salt and spicy aromas. Geniva wished she could be in the kitchen to taste test.

“Thank you,” the woman said. Was she stupid? You didn’t say thank you to a slave, as you didn’t spit on a merchant. This wasn’t how it worked.

The woman turned back to Sir Austin master, and he took his chance to speak.

“If you wanted beautiful Glaka, you could have merely just asked. I have a whole sweet of lovely slave women for you to choose from. We will need to negotiate pricing, but I’m sure we can work something out.”

The women nodded to the other slave girl, “What about her? What’s her price?”

“32? She is seven hundred dantas.”

“Seven hundred?” the woman asked. “She is beautiful, but there must be a reason for so much. Does she have any talents?”

“No, Kaully, I’m afraid not. Though she does provide excellent service and an expertise-”

“She is barely thirteen, Austin. You cannot honestly believe she has an expertise in anything.”

“Well, she is not so young. She only looks it. She must be seventeen at least.”

Sure, just over legal age. Just old enough to be decent. Not that ‘legal age’ matters to a man like you, or decency for a slave like her.

MissKaully picked up her tiny fork and pulled apart the salmon, ripping it’s flesh apart. She lifted it to her mouth, chewing swallowing, setting her fork back down, and going back to talking. Like it was nothing. Like it was no big deal. Like this delicacy, this million danta delight was just an everyday thing. Like fish just grew on trees.

“Of course. But I’m not interested in her.”

“Are you sure? We can negotiate the price.”

“No,” MissKaully said, picking up her fork again and stabbing another sliver of fish.

“Of course, then let me bring in the other girls,” Sir Austin master snapped at Geniva. “Glaka, get me 17, 23, and-”

“No,” the woman said, quite. Sir Austin master stopped. “What’s her price?”

“Her?” Sir Austin master asked, incredulous. “You want her? Sixty four? She wouldn’t make a good centerpiece. She wouldn’t make a good one at all. Let me-”

“Austin, please. What is her price?”

He paused, thinking, “Eight fifty two.”

What? No-

“Sold.”

Both Geniva and Sir Austin master froze. MissKaully, who hadn’t wanted to part with seven hundred dantas, was spending eight hundred and fifty two dantas. On her? On Geniva? On the hideous, deformed Glaka with an overbite and acid scars?

“I’m sorry, what?” Sir Austin master asked.

“Was I unclear? I want her. I want her to be seen by the world. I would like her to be the centerpiece of the fashion exhibition of this year’s Four Moons Festival. Do you need me to continue?”

“No,” Sir Austin master said. “No, you can’t. People will know she was mine, they’ll know that I gave… gave this to the Four Moons Festival. I can give better. For less!”

“No,” MissKaully, MissKaully master, Geniva supposed, said. “You may be able to give me a more ‘perfect’ girl, but not better. This girl is who I want to be seen wearing the most beautiful fashion this year. She is more unique, more stunning, than any girl I have seen in quite some time.”

“But-” Sir Austin master stuttered. “But she’s a Glaka! Please, I can give you better.”

“I don’t know what you mean, Sir. She’s a Glaka? We’re all human, aren’t we. You know, my sister is a Glaka, and she is the most beautiful girl I know. Father was a Glaka, and he is the most reputable. Scars, freedom, debilities. These are not what makes us whole. These are not what makes us beautiful. They are not what make us us,” MissKaully, master, pulled off one of her thin gloves, pulling off two of her fingers with it. “Sir Austin, I didn’t know what type of man I’d find here, but I hope you will not judge me just because I am different. I hope you will not judge me because I was born unclean, of two worlds. I hope you will not judge this girl just because her beauty is not conventional. Because then, I will not judge you for being so selfish, so petty, as to be thinking of taking this girl off the market.”

“You have no say in-”

“But if you do decide that she is no longer available for purchase, may I remind you the catastrophe it would be if anyone found out your daughter was made pregnant while unmarried, and to a peasant boy at that? I may not care about such things, but do you think you sister will? Who disowned her own daughter? Do you think your business partners will care? Who have scorned peasants for so long as to fear them, and fear becoming them? So this is my final offer, eight hundred and fifty two dantas, or your little secret will be household knowledge by the end of the week.”

Sir Austin master was white faced, stunned.

Miss Kaully took the napkin pinned to her shirt and laid it across her plate as she stood, tossing a heavy pouch onto the table. “Nine hundred dantas. Keep the change. I will send the paperwork over. I want it back by midnight. Good day, sir.”

She started to leave and looked over at me, “Would you come with me?”

A question. A question? This Miss Kaully master was a strange woman. She didn’t speak like anyone Geniva had ever met, thought like anyone she’d ever met, negotiated like anyone she’d ever met. But Geniva was starting to think she could get used to it.

She bowed to her old master, her old tourmenter, the man so disgusted at her he’d beat her if she let herself be seen by him when he wasn’t expecting it.

“Good bye, Sir Austin.”

Then Geniva strode after Miss Kaully, head held high. She was a Glaka, she was a snake, she was unconventional, but maybe, just maybe, she could be beautiful anyway. And striding down the runway at the Four Moons Festival, hair done up, a suit full of cutouts, face lifted high, lights blazing directly on her, she actually believed it.