My eyes adapt fast and I can already make out what my Inspect had told me. Automatically switching on Darkvision, the room becomes bright enough for my eyes to see normally.

  The person turns out to be a man. At least, I think he’s a man – in his position it’s hard to tell for sure. Nor is it easy to determine what age he is and directing an Inspect directly at him seems a bit rude to me given the situation. He’s kneeling in the centre of the room with his head down and his hands twisted tightly in his lap. He’s only moving to breathe, the tips of his shoulder-length black hair twitching slightly.

  I throw a look at Linde who’s still waiting patiently next to me.

  “What is this?” I ask, my voice tight. It doesn’t look good and I have a nasty suspicion I know exactly what it is, some of my own fears of what arriving in Nicholas’ world might entail coming back to mind. Those fears haven’t eventuated, fortunately, but that doesn’t mean that other people aren’t subject to them.

  “This is the slave Housekeeper Sethen assigned to you on Lord Nicholas’ command,” she answers easily as if it’s an everyday affair. Which, for all I know, in this world, it might be.

  I clench my fists and feel a muscle in my jaw twitching. A slave.

  But getting angry at either of the two here would just be unfair – Linde has had nothing to do with it, and it’s not the man’s fault that he’s been sent here.

  “Stand up, please,” I direct at the man with a controlled voice. There’s a moment of hesitation and then he scrambles to his feet. He puts his hands behind his back and his head down, but I can see him trembling slightly nonetheless in the continued faint movement of his hair. Now on his feet, I can see he’s much the same height as I am, his shoulders broader. He looks full-grown. That’s a relief, at least.

  Around his neck is a dull metallic collar – why is it always a collar? I ask myself with some exasperation. It seems a little cliché. Why not a bracelet? Then again, I suppose that it’s more survivable to lose a hand than a head if they can’t cut through the metal itself – the collar makes it harder to escape. That makes me wonder absently whether I could manage to get free or if even Flesh-Shaping wouldn’t be able to save me.

  “What is your name?” I ask. I try to gentle my voice slightly – it’s not his fault – but I don’t succeed very well.

  “Loran, master,” he answers quietly in a smooth baritone voice.

  “No,” I say reflexively, then almost kick myself when I see him flinch. “Don’t call me ‘master’,” I clarify. I had enough of that with River at the start and with her – him, at the time – it had been an odd mixture of captor, saviour, and teacher. Here, where it’s coming from someone who I know is a slave…. No. Not dealing with it.

  “Mas- ah, what should I call you?” he asks tentatively, still looking at the floor. My teeth clench even more tightly and I forcibly release them – I might be able to heal a cracked molar, but that doesn’t make it any less painful.

  As for his question, ‘nothing’ is the answer that comes to my lips as I’m determined to sort this out with Nicholas as soon as I can, but that wouldn’t just make Loran feel even more nervous, probably.

  “I prefer Markus,” I say dryly, already aware that he’s probably going to be as reluctant to use that as Linde is. Perhaps more so depending on how likely he thinks he is to face discipline for doing so, or how acutely he perceives the difference in status between us. I sigh. I’m going to have to get used to titles, aren’t I? “Alternatively, you can use ‘my lord’ or ‘sir’, whichever is more comfortable for you.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” he responds immediately. The fact that he thanks me for it turns my stomach. I know I’ve essentially enslaved others – in the most recent months, I forcibly Bonded the Pathwalkers and Warriors of the red tribe who attacked us. When I think about how I resolved months ago to never force beings into a Bond, I feel a little guilty. But they had done me wrong first and would have continued to work against me and my people if I’d let them go so my own guilt was the price I preferred to pay. And, technically, they’d had the choice of death if they really couldn’t stomach the Bond, as poor a choice as that was.

  Then, when they agreed to the Bond in exchange for their lives, I made sure to treat them with the respect they earned and gave them the opportunity to make themselves useful and earn more status in the village. It wasn’t some never-ending sentence of debasement and exploitation. But then, I may be jumping to conclusions. Perhaps ‘slave’ here doesn’t mean what I expect it to be. Though, given the evidence so far, I don’t think I’m far off the mark. Still, it’s better for me to get the information from the horse’ mouth.

  “Where is Nicholas?” I ask Linde with a hard note in my voice. She pales slightly and I realise that I have a deep scowl on my face. I force my muscles to relax a little and even step away from her to make it clear that I have no violence in mind.

  “I am uncertain, my lord,” she replies, her voice wavering slightly, her eyes darting away. “I can go and find out, if you wish?”

  “Please,” I ask her – the sooner this is sorted out, the better.

  “Yes, my lord,” she acknowledges and then disappears – if I couldn’t hear her footsteps tapping quickly along the marble tiles, I might have thought she’d used magic to do so.

  I turn to look at the man but find myself at a momentary loss for words. What do I even say to him?

  “Just give me a moment,” I mumble and then stride past him towards the curtained windows. I ignore his slightly confused ‘yes, sir’ that acknowledges my words. The curtains are white, but they have a thick underlayer which prevents almost all the light from coming through. It should be as easy to sleep in this room as in the cave below ground when it comes to light interference. I’ll have to figure out how not to oversleep since no doubt I’ll have more time-sensitive demands on me than those I’m used to. Perhaps they have alarm clocks in this world?

  The curtains are heavy as I pull them back and I’m briefly blinded before I realise that I need to turn off my Darkvision. This whole slave business has put me completely off-balance.

  My Bound are outside, waiting with varying degrees of impatience. I unlatch the floor to ceiling window-doors and open them about a hand’s width.

  “Be careful not to damage anything!” I warn them, eyeing Lathani and Trouble in particular – the young nunda recently came into conflict with Tarra when she accidentally misfired with one of her shadow shifts and knocked the herbalist’s furniture over, spilling herbs onto the floor and ruining several potions. As for Trouble, I remember well what he used to be like and can’t be sure that he’s changed. I give the other two male raptorcats a stern look for good measure. I then remember the other person in the room with me. “There’s someone else here – he’s no threat.”

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Feeling that I should probably warn Loran too, I call back to him even as I open the doors fully.

  “I’m letting my Bound in. Don’t be afraid – they won’t hurt you. Just stay where you are, please.”

  “Yes, sir,” the man acknowledges – predictably – with a nervous tone. My companions stream in and as I step out of the way and watch them, I get a better picture of the room we’re in.

  I’m a little surprised to see that there’s no bed. Didn’t Linde say we were going to a bedroom? Or is this world weird in that they don’t use beds? There are several pieces of furniture which look more like couches – maybe those are what they use for beds here instead?

  Trouble is already leaping onto one of the couches and making himself comfortable. The samurans are walking around the area, looking at all the furnishings and decorations. Happy has noticed the mirror and seems transfixed by it.

  Markus, have you seen this? she asks excitedly. They’ve somehow frozen water so it is a perfect reflection!

  “It’s glass,” I tell her. “Melted sand with a backing of silvery metal to make it fully reflective.”

  Melted sand and metal, hmm? she repeats thoughtfully, reaching out to touch the frame of the mirror. I see the eyes of her reflection light up and can’t help a smile from appearing on my face at her excitement. Hunter is also inspecting something, though I can’t tell what. Maybe there are runes around – perhaps that’s what the blue light I noticed is anchored by. I leave her to it. River is testing one of the couches thoughtfully.

  It bounces, she tells me as she presses down on the cushion and then releases it. It’s even more comfortable than your mattress! That’s high praise considering how much she loved my mattress when I created it – and how I had to make another for her for the occasions when she wanted to sleep in her hut instead of mine.

  “It probably uses springs,” I guess. “I didn’t bother to put those in my mattress.”

  Oh, like those twists of metal you showed the farmers for making traps to protect the herds? River checks curiously.

  “Yes, exactly,” I confirm.

  The two Warriors are inspecting the edges of the room, and most of the others are sniffing around either the edges or the furniture. Kalanthia hasn’t bothered to come in so I peek out of the doors at her.

  “Not coming in?”

  I do not wish to be confined in a house, she replies with distaste. I will stay here. Perhaps I will go hunting.

  “Let me find out where you can go hunting first,” I ask her cautiously. “We don’t want to accidentally kill someone’s prize cattle on the first day of us being in this world. Please, just be patient for today and go hunting tomorrow. If you want to sleep out here rather than in the room, that’s fine. There’s enough space inside, though, and we can leave the door open, if you want.”

  The nunda grumbles a bit and I sense her dissatisfaction. I understand it – what I’m getting over the Bond is that she’s feeling caged, trapped. She wants to do some hunting to return to an element of normality and I can understand that. At the same time, I saw on the tour how much farmland there is around here, and can’t imagine that they’ll welcome a nunda coming and taking one or more of their livestock.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell her quietly, stepping out of the room and leaning against her shoulder, reaching up to scratch her jaw exactly in the way she likes it. “I’ll see what I can arrange with Nicholas, alright?”

  The giant feline is silent for a long moment. She then huffs a rotten-meat-scented breath and curls her head to press me to her shoulder in a sort of hug.

  I trust you, Markus Wolfe, she responds in the tone of a confessional. I do not trust the other Binder. But I have agreed to give him the opportunity to prove himself to me. I will be patient.

  “Thank you,” I tell her gratefully, feeling just how hard this is for her. After a moment, she pulls back from the hug so I give her a final scratch and then step back into the room. The sooner I can speak to Nicholas, the better.

  Seeing Loran standing dead-still where I left him, I head in his direction. Since I’m approaching from behind him, I see just how tightly his hands are clasped behind him – they’re practically white from the pressure.

  “It’s alright,” I try to soothe him. “They’re not going to hurt you, and neither am I.”

  He looks at me for the first time and I see just how wide his chestnut-brown eyes are a moment before he remembers himself and lowers his gaze again.

  “Yes, sir,” he answers and I’m beginning to think that that is no better than ‘master’ – it’s the tone more than the words which is important. Frustrated anger flashes through me once more and I force myself to take a deep – and silent – breath. I’ll speak to Nicholas about it when Linde comes back to tell me where he is.

  “Hey, why don’t you show me around? Tell me what the things are used for?” I suggest to Loran, figuring that we both need the distraction.

  “Show you the room…? Oh, yes, of course sir.” He seems just as glad of something to do as I am. Though he starts off sounding nervous and he shies away when one of my companions steps towards or even looks at him, he soon warms up.

  I discover that the people on this world aren’t quite as strange as I was starting to think they were – they do use beds. Apparently, I haven’t been given a single room, but rooms – this is the sitting room and there are two bedrooms on either side of it. Big bedrooms – each is almost as big as the sitting room itself and is equipped with a king-sized four-poster bed, another sitting area near the fire, and a solid-looking desk and chair.

  Plus, each has its own bathroom attached which makes me very happy – though this place looks far more old-timey than modern, they appear to have alternatives for interior plumbing. No outhouses, which relieves me intensely, there’s instead a proper toilet which is even equipped with a bidet. It’s a slightly different shape from what I’m used to – seat-less and with two holes as if I might like to have companionship while doing my business. No showers either, but the sunken baths look rather luxurious and are easily big enough for two people to lie down side by side.

  Loran even demonstrates how they work when I ask – there are no taps but tapping certain runes carved on the rim of the bath causes water of various temperatures to fill the bath from a paired set of runes in the bottom of the tub. When Hunter sees those, she grunts so loudly for joy that it’s practically a squeak.

  “We’ve lost her,” I joke with Loran as we leave her kneeling on the floor with her head in the tub.

  The man has relaxed a fair bit since we started the tour which is probably why he dares to venture a comment.

  “Sir, is, uh, she interested in runes?” he asks nervously.

  “Loves them,” I reply cheerfully, not wanting to make a big deal of it. “She’s done very well with what little resources she’s had so far. I reckon that right now she’s over the moon to see some different uses – and probably different runes.”

  Loran nods slowly and I can practically see his mind turning over the idea that the crocodilian-looking samuran is a runes aficionado. Just wait until he realises that most of my Bound are sapient.

  Markus, the man is coming, Fenrir warns me at that moment. He’s taken up guard-duty as usual, sitting by the open door to the rest of the house. Though he doesn’t use Nicholas’ name he sends me a sense of his scent which, paired with a memory from earlier, is enough to indicate exactly who’s coming.

  Alright, good. I reply to Fenrir grimly. You can let him in when he arrives. Striding towards the door, I pause a little distance away from it – ironically in the same place where Loran was waiting for me – and cross my arms.

  here!

  here!

  here!

  here