Nicholas appears in the doorway. There’s a quiet intake of breath and an abrupt movement next to me. I look around to see that Loran has fallen back to his knees and is staring silently at the ground again. The lord only spares him a brief glance before looking at me. His eyes narrow and I see wariness enter his posture – clearly he can tell that I’m not happy.

  “Markus. I was informed you wished to speak to me. Are the rooms not to your satisfaction? I can call my housekeeper and have them changed to suit you.” His words are crisp, that tone of authority present even while he’s offering me something.

  “The rooms are fine,” I tell him honestly. “Great, even. It’s the slave who came with them that’s the problem.”

  “He has displeased you?” Nicholas asks, his expression becoming forbidding as he looks at the slave kneeling beside me. I look down to see the man flinch, his hands clasped together tightly behind his back. They’re shaking once more.

  “Not at all,” I hurry to refute. “Loran himself is absolutely fine. Helpful, even.” I don’t know what would happen to a slave who was ‘displeasing’ to a lord’s heir, even if we haven’t formalised that yet. Nothing good, I can imagine.

  “Then what is the issue?” Nicholas asks, sounding confused. At least his gaze is back on me and Loran has relaxed a touch.

  “The fact that he’s a slave in the first place!” I exclaim, breathing slightly more heavily and taking an unconscious step towards Nicholas.

  The man doesn’t answer immediately. Instead, his watchful gaze wanders around the room. The silent room – all of my Bound are currently watching what is happening, prepared to react or intervene. Even Hunter has poked her head out of the bathroom, dragging herself away from the pull of the runes.

  “Thank you, Linde, you may go,” Nicholas says quietly to the woman who led me to the room. She’s watching the events with wide eyes and seems frightened. I don’t think I’m imagining the gleam of fascination in her gaze, though. She quickly bows to Nicholas in the same way as she did to me earlier and then hurries away. I wonder for a moment whether Nicholas sent her away because he was concerned about her getting caught up in a potential fight or because he doesn’t want the contents of this conversation getting shared around the house.

  Since I don’t want this to come to a physical fight, and I don’t want Nicholas thinking that that’s likely to happen, I take a deep breath and step back to my previous position. Worse comes to worst, we’ll walk out. But I want to give Nicholas a chance to explain himself. And, if slavery is as endemic to this place as the nonchalance it’s been treated with so far seems to indicate, then it’s something I’ll have to face sooner or later.

  “I take it that you are an abolitionist?” Nicholas asks carefully. Though the word is different, it seems to translate to the same kind of idea – someone who dislikes slavery and wants it abolished as a practice.

  “Yes, I am,” I agree.

  “Yet you use Dominate with enough frequency to have brought it to Master level,” he points out.

  “I only force the Bond on those who have been proven to pose a threat to me or my people. And even then I offer them death as an alternative, poor as it might be,” I explain even while feeling more than a little hypocritical. “In other cases, the Battle of Wills is more of a negotiation than a show of force, and the other party has the option to refuse – a decision that I will respect.”

  Nicholas’s eyes light up with a realisation.

  “That is why you were able to intentionally fail the Battle of Wills with Sarran without being paralysed afterwards. I had been wondering about that.”

  I nod slowly. His conclusion, drawn from evidence which Sarran must have told him, reminds me that I’m now among people who actually know what my Class is and what it can do. For all I know, the way I’ve been doing things has been well-documented. That’s a good thing if I decide to stay – I won’t need to flounder in the dark any longer. But if I walk away, it also means someone knows all the weaknesses of my Class. Though from Nicholas’ reactions so far, it seems I’ve developed areas which most Tamers don’t which might make up for that a little.

  “Back to the subject at hand, you have indicated that you accept using the Bond on those who do wrong against you? I do not know what it was like in the world of your birth, but here slavery is a sentence imposed on criminals so that they might make up for their crimes with service to the communities they have wronged.”

  “So Loran did something to you and that’s why he’s now a slave?” I ask, my eyes narrowing even as a hint of doubt enters my thoughts. While morally speaking I disagree with slavery as a punishment, it really is hypocritical to get too angry about it considering how I reacted to the attack of Flying-blade’s samurans.

  “Ah, not exactly,” Nicholas admits. “He did nothing directly to me or my House, but I know that he was a thief. He would have paid a fine the first time, received physical chastisement the second, and when he was caught the third time, he was levied with a sentence of slavery. His debt was calculated and his service contract was sold. That way, his victims were recompensed, the territorial authority was reimbursed for its losses, and his new master could avail him or herself of his services. I will admit that I, or rather you, are not his first master, but I thought he would be useful for my heir so when his contract appeared in the listings, I decided to buy him. If you do not want him, I will relist him.”

  “Sell him, you mean,” I snap, feeling nauseous. I look down at Loran awkwardly. It feels wrong to have this conversation above his head, as if he’s not even there, but something tells me that he’d rather not have attention drawn to him.

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  And if the sheer nonchalance that Nicholas is speaking with about ‘physical chastisement’, ‘his services’, and ‘listings’ is anything to go by, I can understand why. I close my eyes briefly and take a deep breath. I’m living in this world now. It’s just as well I become aware of some of the darkest parts of its underbelly. Better than marching out on my own and then at some point in the future accidentally contravening a law to the point that I’m the one facing the judge.

  So all slaves are criminals. That’s not a system that could be abused at all.

  “Are there any rules about how slaves can be treated? Any minimum standards of care? Anything they’re not allowed to be used for?”

  Nicholas looks a little startled by the questions. I can only hope that he’s realised I’m not asking because I want to know just how far I can push my limits with Loran.

  “No,” he responds cautiously. “It is frowned upon to kill them, but there are no consequences if it happens. Of course, any use of a slave to commit illegal acts is considered as a crime committed by the one who holds his or her contract. And most people recognise that providing adequate food, clothes, and shelter is a requirement for the continued productivity of the slave in question.”

  I clench my teeth together and swallow hard. It’s as I thought. An absolutely messed up system – it doesn’t escape me that he said ‘most people’, not ‘everyone’. I know that justice on Earth wasn't perfect – even in my country there were serious problems with the prison system. But at least there we were trying. There were limits on what prisoners could endure, and multiple measures to try to continue to treat them as people. Here, it seems like when someone contravenes the law sufficiently, they are stripped of their personhood. The one who buys their contract can do whatever he or she likes to and with them, and they have no recourse to justice unless they’re being forced to do something genuinely illegal. And even then, I doubt it ends well for the slave in question if they get caught, or if they tattle on their ‘master’.

  In some ways, I get it. It’s an efficient system – someone causes problems for the state, so eventually they get slapped with a sentence that turns them into a resource to be used rather than a burden. But what ‘problems’ count? Is it only the hardened thieves, murderers, and rapists? Or might someone who is mentally ill end up on the wrong side of the law as they often do in the country of my birth? Or someone so poor and desperate that they steal to survive? Or drug addicts? What about the homeless? Or the unemployed? Is there support for them, or are they just slapped with a slavery sentence when they start to become too much of a bother or an eyesore?

  I force myself to breathe deeply. I don’t even try to wipe the emotions from my expression, though – I don’t care if Nicholas realises how much this upsets me.

  “And you?” I ask him after a moment, focussing on his cautious and searching expression. “How do you treat your slaves?” Surely, if he is giving one to me, he has more of his own. “Do you recognise that it’s important for them to be getting even the basics?”

  Nicholas draws himself together, standing a little more upright.

  “You must have had a poor impression of me to ask that,” he replies coldly. I just glare at him heatedly.

  “I’ve just been told that I’ve entered a world where slavery is actually a part of the ‘justice’ system, where people can be legally turned into objects to be sold who are not recognised as due even the basics of care or dignified treatment. Believe me, that I’m still standing here and asking you at all is giving you the benefit of the doubt!” I’m practically growling, then realise when I stop speaking that it’s not only me. There’s a rumble reverberating around the room – my companions are showing their support of me.

  Nicholas eyes them and I see him flexing his shoulders briefly. Then he returns his attention to me, his demeanour slightly less offended.

  “I ensure that the slaves in my household are treated with dignity and care,” he says finally. “Several of them are in positions of authority and have served me loyally for many years. They are all given more than adequate food, clothing, and shelter, and those who contribute to the household are regularly awarded with some coin. They can choose to spend that on luxuries for themselves – which I have assured them I will not take unless it poses a threat to myself or my household – or save it up towards buying out their service contract.”

  “Which would free them, right?” I check, calming down a little. The rumble around us dies down as my companions take their cues from me.

  “That’s correct.”

  “So you could free them at any time?” I ask.

  “I could,” he responds neutrally.

  “But you won’t,” I conclude.

  “No,” he replies, not sounding ashamed of it, though his eyes fixed on my face indicate that he’s watching carefully for my reaction. “Why should I? I bought out their service contract; they owe my House a debt which they will pay for with their service. I owe them nothing and gifts are too easily despised; what someone works for is cherished. Perhaps if they have to work hard for many years to purchase their freedom, they will not throw it away so easily afterwards by committing crimes anew.”

  While I don’t agree with everything he says, I kind of get where he’s coming from. I sigh and relax my posture a little to scratch at my beard. I still don’t think that this whole slavery sentence business is a good idea. Or at least it needs significantly more oversight to eliminate the abuse that I’m sure is happening. But Nicholas himself doesn’t seem to be too bad. Not bad enough for me to walk out right now, anyway.

  The fact is that he seems to be at least humane about the way he’s treating the slaves in his care, and if he’s being honest, they might in some ways be better off than many in prisons on Earth. There’s lots more I need to find out more about the whole thing, but if I want to make any changes, I’ll need to be in a position of power to do so. And a position of power is exactly what Nicholas is offering me – to be his heir and to take part in a competition to become king of the whole country. Walking out now doesn’t help anyone.

  Which brings me to the question of Loran in particular.

  “So why did you think I wanted a slave to be waiting for me in my room?” I ask, feeling the weight of my exhaustion press down on me again since my anger has departed.

  “Well, it’s tradition for noble heirs to have a manservant, or a maid in the case of a female heir.”

  “OK, fine. But why a slave?” I ask doggedly.

  “The position of manservant is one which requires a great amount of trust and loyalty,” Nicholas explains. While I get that, and can see it in Sarran, I would have thought that asking someone you’re basically keeping captive against their will to be loyal is a bit much. “As such, it is tradition in my family to Bind our manservant which, due to agreements with the King, requires them to be slaves.”

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