Part 6 (1/2)
”Happy as I can be,” he remarked in a tone that made it abundantly clear how he truly felt.
”Would you like to get out?” Desmeres asked.
”Why? You offering?” he asked, a.s.suming a mock enthusiasm. ”Golly, yes, master. I truly would love to escape. Thank you so much for asking.”
”Right. Have a look around, Udo. How many guards to do you see? How many other owners? How many folks besides slaves like yourself?” Desmeres asked.
”None,” Udo said.
”And what does that mean to you?” Desmeres prodded.
”It means either you are stupid or you are poor,” Udo said.
”If you know there are no guards to stop you, why don't you just run away?”
”Getting hunted down by whatever bloodthirsty bounty hunters you're bound to hire for running out on that little pit of debt the fellow before you put us in doesn't strike me as an improvement.”
”My employer here owns the debts now.”
”Well she'd be the one doing the hiring then. Look, as much as I enjoy the conversation, I a.s.sume you'll be wanting me to work tomorrow, and if it is the same to you, I'd like some rest.”
”Right, then. He's the one. Udo is it?” Desmeres decided.
Carefully leafing through a stack of pages he'd been carrying in a bag, he selected one.
”Udo, can you read?” he asked.
”Not as such,” he said.
”Can you recognize your name?” Desmeres continued.
”Yeah,” he replied.
”There, on that page, is your name. It says you owe seven silver coins,” Desmeres explained.
”Lovely. I'll have it for you in a few years, a.s.suming I don't need to eat or sleep till then,” he sneered.
Desmeres tore the page up.
”What . . . what's that about?” Udo asked.
”You no longer have a debt. You have nothing to tie you here,” he said.
”There's . . . there's other papers like that, yeah? This is a trick, yeah?” Udo said, emotion showing for the first time in is voice.
”Not that you'd believe me, but no, that is the only record of your debt,” Desmeres explained. ”Listen, my employer here is, well, not the generous sort, but the sort who has more unique tastes in labor. A lifetime of servitude is all well and good, but a single, legitimate favor at just the right time, that's something else. Never far from a friend, understand?”
”Oh, I understand, she's off her head,” Udo said, glancing at her. ”No offense. A nice sort of off her head.”
”As though I honestly cared what you think,” Myranda quipped quickly, not certain that she was supposed to leave character yet.
”The wealthy use the word eccentric,” Desmeres corrected. ”Regardless. What it boils down to is this. We will be leaving within the week. At the end of that time we expect to hear from every last one of you. There will be no work until then. Your options are simple. Come to us and agree to do my employer here a single favor, with a drop of blood in lieu of a signature on a contract, and you shall have your choice of either a share of this mine to continue your life here, or enough gold to start your life elsewhere.”
With that, Desmeres opened the door and led Myranda out.
”You can do the rest of the rationing alone, workers. The Mistress has grown weary of the tour,” Desmeres instructed.
Myranda and Desmeres marched off toward the manor. When the others had returned to the task, she turned to him.
”Now what?” she asked.
”Now we wait. It doesn't usually take more than three days,” Desmeres said.
”Just like that? He'll convince the rest?” she asked.
”Just like that,” he replied.
The next few days were the very definition of tedium. Aside from a delivery of supplies and a supply caravan that had to be turned away due to the lack of recent work, the time was utterly filled with Desmeres tracing out two hundred names on the pages of a book. On the fourth day, there was a knock on the door. Desmeres answered it.
”I think . . . I think we've all decided,” Udo said uncertainly.
Outside there were barely a dozen other slaves, likely the only others that shared Udo's apathy about life in general. Desmeres found their names, p.r.i.c.ked their fingers, and rattled off a well practiced speech.
”There will come a time when you will hear a voice, but not see a face. The voice will remind you of this day, the day when you were given your freedom in exchange for a favor. On that day, whether it comes today or in a generation, you will repay the debt if it is within your power. You will make your sons and daughters aware of the debt, and instruct them to do the same, for when you pa.s.s on, the debt pa.s.ses to them. Understood?” Desmeres said.
This would invariably result in a wide eyed nod. Those who wished to stay were given a slip of paper ent.i.tling them to a portion of the mine. Those wis.h.i.+ng to leave were given a handful of coins. Gold coins. Then each was given the paper signifying their debt. In roughly the time it took for a pair of tired people to sprint to the huts, a second small group came to collect. The groups grew and compounded in size and enthusiasm as the promise of freedom and the spark of greed overcame their better judgment. Strangely, a handful of the freed slaves lingered just outside the door, faces white as ghosts, dutifully putting to rest anything that seemed to be the beginnings of a riot. Before the sun had set on that fourth day, all of the slaves were accounted for. As night descended, the distant sounds of celebration took the place of the silence and howling of winds that had marked each night before.
”Why were those slaves keeping the peace of their own accord?” Myranda asked, still mystified by how smoothly the mad enterprise had gone.
”Lain called for the debt to be repaid immediately,” Desmeres explained.
”But . . . how? I didn't see him,” Myranda asked.
”He's an a.s.sa.s.sin. If he doesn't want to be seen, he won't be. And when you hear a ghost whisper an order in your ear and inform you that your life debt needs to be repaid, you tend to find yourself more eager to please than to find out what the penalty for failure is,” he said.
A few days pa.s.sed and, now working for themselves, a fair amount of the workers returned to the mines. Desmeres traced out a few official looking doc.u.ments that would ward off the authorities that might doubt the highly dubious story the freed men and women would tell. Myranda was left mainly with boredom and the soul searing images of suffering she'd seen in her brief time among the enslaved to pa.s.s the time. She tried to imagine Lain in a similar situation, with the added stigma of being hated by his fellow slaves. A large part of who he was fell into place. It was not until a full week had pa.s.sed that the monotony was broken.
”We need to move, NOW!” Desmeres said, bursting into the dining room.
”What? Why?” Myranda asked, but Desmeres only rushed out the door.
The sun was just dropping below the horizon as Myranda rushed to the wagon her friend had run to. Desmeres had unhooked two of the horses, and one of them was saddled and ready.
”We have problems. An old friend of mine is about to pay us a visit,” he said.
”Who?” she asked.
”Arden. He calls himself a bounty hunter, but head hunter is more appropriate. That tends to be the only part he brings back. He is one of those 'other agents' I told you about, the ones who want you as badly as we do and are not so picky about the state you are in when they receive you. What is worse, he has an escort. Soldiers. That means he is sanctioned by the military and will have all of the authority he needs to search this whole place. We cannot let him see you. More importantly, we cannot let them see me, because even if I wasn't on the 'kill on sight' list he would put a knife in my back,” he said, trying to fit a saddle onto the second.
”Why?” she asked.