Page 4 of Dax: Gratefully Bonded (Rogue Bonds #2)

Dax

I was a terrible dimari. I knew that, objectively, and I’d gathered plenty of evidence over the past year to back up the idea. I couldn’t follow rules. I couldn’t keep my opinions to myself. My master hated me. What more did I need to know?

And now, I was sitting in a café, across from a dimari who was everything that I was not, knowing with absolute certainty that my master was going to dismiss me from my job and send me back to Eumad, informing my trainers that I was every bit as useless as I knew myself to be.

Kade scanned the label on the corner of the table with his comm, then chose an order and sent it off to the kitchen. Meanwhile, I hadn’t even thought to bring my comm with me. My master had given me one, a few days after we’d arrived at his home, but he so rarely asked anything of me that I’d long ago given up wearing it. Kade’s was strapped to his wrist, the device shiny and clean, and the holographic screen it projected was crisp and clear. The device I’d been given was battered and worn, and the screen flickered when I tried to use it.

“I’ve ordered you some moloto juice and a Big Breakfast,” Kade informed me. “It must be a while since you’ve had a decent meal.”

I felt my scales ripple at the pointed reprimand. A good dimari would have pleased their master. A pleased master provided adequate food for their dimari. And therefore, if I was underweight, it was because I was a bad dimari.

There was no point in trying to justify anything I’d done over the past year to the man sitting across from me. He was the epitome of everything a dimari was supposed to be. Kade was strong. He was confident. His master was proud of him. That much was clear from the way he was given tasks and then left to complete them as he saw fit, without any further supervision. My master, on the other hand, didn’t even trust me to open the door to his house and greet a stranger.

“You’ve been here a year, haven’t you?” Kade asked, and I shrank down in my chair.

“Yes,” I said. A year of trying, and I hadn’t been able to please my master one tiny bit.

Kade sighed. The scales across his neck shimmered with faint ripples of colour, green and violet glowing briefly atop the brown he wore so casually. It was a typical sign of agitation in a Vangravian.

Was that what my master was so displeased with? I wondered, as I watched the display of colour. It hadn’t occurred to me to try and match my master’s colouring, my own scales naturally a light turquoise-blue, but perhaps he would have been happier with me if I’d tried to colour myself closer to his dusky brown skin. I’d never been particularly good at altering my colours, but I could at least have tried.

“I need to explain a few things to you,” Kade said. “Some of them are going to be difficult to understand. But the important thing to remember is that my master and I are both here to help you. We care a great deal about your wellbeing and we want you to succeed.”

My gut lurched, and for a moment, I found it difficult to breathe. “I see,” I said, feeling the crushing weight of dejection bearing down on me. “I’m such a terrible dimari that my master had to find another dimari to teach me how to do my job?” It was worse than I’d thought. I knew I was failing miserably at serving my master. But up until now, he’d mostly seemed disinterested in me, rather than angry or annoyed. But to decide to have me retrained, I must be truly awful.

“No, no, that’s not it at all,” Kade said, with what I felt was an excessive degree of earnestness. “It’s an entirely different problem. But the good news is that it’s a problem we can solve. Actually, there are two problems, but let’s deal with one at a time.”

I shrugged helplessly, feeling like each of my limbs weighed a tonne. My master hated me. What difference did it make to know the exact reasons why?

But Kade forged ahead, undeterred by my lack of enthusiasm. “You and I were raised on the same planet and we went through a large part of the same training. So it would be equally true for both of us that we were taught a great deal about a number of different species and what they expected of a dimari; the Basuba, the Fortusians, the Polvron. Each species has their own culture and their own expectations, and what is considered polite for one culture would be considered strange, or even rude, for a different culture. Do you agree?”

“Yes,” I said morosely. I knew myself well enough to know that the cultural specifications of my master were only a small part of the problem.

“So the first problem – which is a problem for every single dimari that ends up on Rendol 4,” Kade said, “is that we were never taught anything about Alliance culture. There are very few Alliance members who ever buy a dimari, so the Eumadians don’t generally teach us about their culture. It’s just not economically viable. And the people here who buy dimari generally don’t know a great deal about how we’re trained or what we’re taught to do. They buy us for a specific purpose, but they don’t think much beyond that one role. I’m a combat specialist,” he went on, and I was intrigued now. Kade had had difficulties when he’d arrived? I wanted to know more. “My master is in the military, and he needed someone to protect him on his more dangerous missions. Which I can do. But he didn’t think much about how he and I were supposed to interact during all the time we’re not on missions. We had a great many misunderstandings before we learned what to expect of each other.”

That made me feel just a fraction better. If this strong, confident, knowledgeable dimari had been caught off guard, then perhaps it wasn’t such a huge crime that I’d found myself out of my depth with my own master.

“That lack of knowledge creates a huge problem,” Kade continued. “Your master holds certain standards as self-evident, which are completely foreign to us, while we try to conform to standards which are viewed with confusion, or even disdain, among the Alliance species.

“But there is some good news in all of this,” he went on, while I had to make a concerted effort to stop myself from hyperventilating. I’d spent twenty years training to please my master, and I’d learned all the wrong things?

“The simple solution is for you to learn more about Alliance culture,” Kade said, as if he was suggesting nothing more complicated than buying a different brand of soap. “Do you have a comm? I can send you a list of documents that you might find helpful.”

I sagged in my seat, one more failure rising up to bite me. “I left it at my master’s house,” I muttered, staring at the table.

He shrugged. “Okay. I’ll send it to you when we get back. It’s nothing terribly difficult. It’s mostly things like how they like to be addressed, how they want you to behave around strangers, that sort of thing. They have a few social rituals that are a little different from what we’re taught to expect.”

That sounded simple enough. But I doubted that a few social customs could explain away my master’s utter disgust with me. “What’s the second problem?” I asked, hoping that it was something other than my own abysmal behaviour.

Kade tapped at his comm, bringing up a document that I recognised immediately. It was the operations manual I’d been sent here with, containing my contract of sale and a detailed description of my training. “When your master bought you-” Kade began to say, but I interrupted him.

“Where did you get that?” I asked, my entire body going rigid. I had privately hoped that no one but my master would ever lay eyes on that document.

Kade hesitated. “My master got a copy from Colonel Henderson. Do you know who he is?”

“He’s my master’s commanding officer?” I said, hoping I was correct. My master had mentioned Henderson several times throughout the past year, though he’d never given me much context for the comments he’d made about him. “You shouldn’t have that,” I added, glowering at the document.

Kade closed it, the holographic screen blinking out of existence far too late to ease my agitation. He regarded me in silence, probably contemplating how to address the fact that I was an utter disaster in my assigned role.

“I noted the price on your contract,” he said, and I withered in my seat. “You were sold for fifteen thousand credits.”

Right at that moment, a waitress arrived with our drinks. Kade had apparently ordered himself a glass of moloto juice, the same as he’d got for me, and he politely thanked the waitress. Meanwhile, I was slowly dying inside.

“My trainers were not pleased with me,” I said, once the waitress had left. I avoided looking at Kade. The typical price of a dimari was forty thousand credits. I hadn’t managed to garner even half of that. “If my master couldn’t afford anyone more expensive…” I trailed off, dreading what that meant for my future. My master had knowingly bought a dimari who was deficient in behaviour and attitude, but even then, he’d been disappointed with the level of service I’d provided. I was worthless.

“Oddly enough,” Kade said, “that’s not the problem we’re dealing with. But just out of curiosity… why were your trainers not pleased with you?”

I winced. He was really going to make me talk about this? “I’m not good at following instructions,” I said.

“Why not?” he pressed, while I shrivelled a little more. “Don’t you want to please your master?”

“Of course I do,” I snapped, then stopped, gritting my teeth as I tried to get my emotions under control. “Of course I want to please him,” I repeated, when I had a handle on my temper. “But he does things that are self-destructive, and I…” I paused, shaking my head, infuriated at myself. “I keep trying to stop him from doing things that are going to harm him.” Regardless of my intentions, that behaviour constituted disobedience. A good dimari was not disobedient. A good dimari did not consider their own opinion to be more important than their master’s.

Whatever response I had expected from Kade, I didn’t receive it. “Hmm,” he said, opening my operations manual again and skimming through the details. “That’s interesting. And maybe that explains why… Hmm.”

“Maybe that explains what?” I dared to ask. Did I really want to know?

“I had thought there’d been an administrative error when your master bought you,” he said, his eyes on the document. “But maybe there wasn’t.” I didn’t know what he was talking about. “Are you aware that your master is not well?”

“He drinks a lot,” I said. “And he has trouble organising things. And he has nightmares. He was injured when I was delivered, and…” My shoulders sagged. “I don’t know the details. He gets angry if I ask him about it.”

Oddly, Kade nodded, as if something suddenly made sense. “Well, maybe that explains why the Eumadians did what they did, then.” He closed the document and looked up at me, a stern but thoughtful look on his face. “According to what Colonel Henderson told us, your master ordered a domestic companion from the Eumadians. Your operations manual clearly shows that you’re not one of those.”

My eyebrows rose… and then I felt a cold thrill of trepidation run through me. “I was delivered to the wrong master?” No wonder he hated me!

“I originally thought so,” Kade said cautiously. “But now I’m not so sure. Your master is… Well, he makes decisions that are not in his own best interests.”

I managed not to scoff. “That’s putting it mildly,” I muttered, then cringed. A good dimari did not speak ill of their own master. Even if I could clearly see all the ways in which my master was slowly digging his own grave.

“But that is perhaps one of the problems here,” Kade said, “if no one explained to you what he was actually looking for.”

“I’m confused,” I admitted. “You said he ordered a domestic companion. So why would the Eumadians send me? I’m a domestic servant.” The two roles had a certain amount of overlap, while at the same time being significantly different responsibilities. A domestic servant was trained to run all the logistical and administrative functions of a large household; ordering groceries, paying bills, arranging repairs, and keeping the house clean and tidy. A domestic companion , on the other hand, was trained in the rudimentary skills needed to run a household, but a much larger part of their education centred on learning how to behave at high class social functions, how to make interesting conversation, how to recognise the latest season’s fashions or suggest appealing outings to their master, such as visits to art galleries or museums. If my master had ordered someone with the latter sort of training, it was no wonder he was sorely disappointed with me.

“Morning, folks,” a chirpy waitress announced, arriving at our table before Kade could explain any more of this convoluted situation. “The Big Breakfast?” she asked, glancing from Kade to me and back.

“That’s for Dax, here,” Kade said, gesturing to me. The waitress set the plate down, and I felt a wave of consternation. The plate was huge! I hadn’t had this much food in a single meal since… well, ever. “Enjoy,” the waitress said, beaming at us both. Then she sashayed off, collecting the plates from a neighbouring table and ferrying them back to the kitchen.

“This is too much,” I muttered, feeling both anxious and embarrassed. “My master would not allow me to eat this much.”

Kade opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again, taking a slow breath. Then he tried again. “Your master has not been depriving you of food deliberately. He is not well, and he’s been having a very difficult time organising food deliveries.”

My shoulders sagged. “I would have expected him to teach me how to do that,” I said, pushing the plate away a fraction. “He doesn’t think me worthy of proper meals.”

“Dax,” Kade said, more sternly this time. “This is exactly what we’ve been talking about. And I think I know why the Eumadians sent you now, even though your master ordered a domestic companion. A companion’s role,” he rushed on, before I could interrupt, “is to guide their master into appealing pastimes. To suggest outings. To create more interest in life than their master would naturally come by.”

“I wasn’t taught how to do any of that,” I grumbled. If Kade had been anyone other than another dimari, I wouldn’t have dared to speak to him in such a tone. But despite his physical fitness and the obvious approval of his master, is was arguable that he and I were actually equal in rank.

“I know,” Kade said, not sounding nearly as smug as I might have expected. “But according to your personality profile, you have a strong tendency to voice your opinions, even if they disagree with your trainer’s intentions.”

I winced. Of course that was in my manual. Any master who bought me would want to be forewarned of his dimari’s cantankerous nature. I wasn’t deliberately trying to be difficult! It was just that I so often saw a better way of doing things than I had been instructed to do…

“In this situation, that’s actually a benefit,” Kade said, shocking me out of my own thoughts. My head snapped up and I frowned at him.

“What?”

“As I said, your master is very ill. And so he’s not always able to make good decisions. So maybe the Eumadians were trying to give him what he needed, even if it wasn’t quite what he wanted. He wanted someone to keep him company and suggest interesting things to do with his time. But what he needed was someone who would override his less optimal decisions and make sure he took the time to look after himself.”

I rolled my eyes. “But I haven’t been doing either of those things. Every time I try to do anything, he tells me not to. He won’t let me clean the house. He won’t let me answer the door. Everything I do annoys him.”

Kade smiled, an expression that looked entirely out of place… until he spoke again. “Because no one told you what your role was actually meant to be. This is not a surprise,” he added, at my exasperated look. “This is one of those strange cultural clashes between humans and Vangravians. They think certain things are obvious which we think are very unusual. But now that you know what he’s actually looking for…”

I thought about that, a very strange train of thought meandering through my head. “So my trainers sent me here because my master needs someone who’s going to ignore what he says some of the time?” The idea was preposterous. It was the opposite of everything a good dimari was supposed to be.

But then again, I was not a very good dimari.

“What you need to understand,” Kade said, “it that first and foremost, Captain Rhodes needs companionship. Domestic chores are only a secondary consideration in your duties to him. You weren’t trained as a domestic companion, but you’re more than capable of improvising your way through those duties, now that you understand what he actually needs.”

He said it with such confidence, such conviction, that I couldn’t help but believe him. I was entirely familiar with the concept of what a companion did, even if some of the details might elude me. So according to him, all I had to do was behave like a domestic companion and learn the nuances of Alliance culture, and my master would be pleased with me? I looked dubiously at Kade, while he was beaming at me reassuringly. Somehow, I doubted it was going to be anything like that simple.