Page 12 of Xel: Broken Bond
He looked down at the bag in his hand. It contained my work clothes from the hotel. Aiden had helped me pack, once he’d explained that we were going to meet my new master, and he’d been rather dismayed to find that the four sets of plain pants and shirts were all I owned. I hoped that my new master was not going to be equally disappointed.
“Well, let’s head over to the house,” my master said, turning in the opposite direction from the building he’d been about to show me before Aiden left. “I’ll show you your room and let you get settled in.” He set off, and I fell into step behind him. He glanced back at me once, and I assumed it was to make sure I was following. I had always worked hard to be obedient to my old master, and I hoped that my new master would quickly realise that I desired to please him.
He glanced back at me again, and I quickened my pace. A good dimari did not keep their master waiting.
But then he glanced at me again, and I felt a wave of anxiety hit me. “Is something wrong… uh… Master?” I asked him, fumbling over the term of address. It felt odd to be calling someone other than my old master ‘Master’, though I didn’t know what else I was supposed to call this man. He was mymaster now, I reminded myself. It shouldn’t be a problem to call him that.
“What? Oh, no, everything’s fine,” he said, his cheeks turning pink. I’d learned from the staff at the hotel that that colour change on a human meant they were embarrassed. But what did he have to be embarrassed about?
Unless I was causing him embarrassment? Were my clothes not appropriate? He hadn’t given me any orders yet, so I didn’t think I could have failed in obeying him. Or perhaps it was…
Oh! I belatedly realised what the problem was, and felt my scales ripple as my own embarrassment hit me. “Would you like me to carry the bag, Master?” I offered hastily. It was entirely inappropriate for my master to be carrying my things.
“Oh, no, it’s fine. It’s not heavy,” he said, glancing down at the bag. “I don’t mind carrying it.”
My scales rippled again, more intensely this time. Hewantedto carry it? Did he not think I was capable of carrying such a paltry weight? Or had I displeased him in some other way?
“And you don’t have to call me master,” he added, as he kept walking. “My name’s Cole.”
What? My mind raced as I tried to make sense of the instruction. I was not to call him master? I instantly forgot my own discomfort with the title, as I realised how absurd that sounded. “Uh… Please forgive me if I’m being rude,” I began, hoping I wasn’t about to make a grave mistake. I didn’t want to be kicked out before we’d even begun. “I’m not familiar with the correct social protocols for this sort of situation. But Commander Hill suggested that in the case that we have a misunderstanding, I should remind you that reading the instruction manual is of high importance.” I kept my eyes on the ground as I said it, hoping that the display of submissiveness might avert any anger on his part. A dimari giving their own master instructions was a gross breach of protocol. But, asAiden had explained on the journey here, there was a difference between reminding my master of the importance of a task, versus explicitly telling him to go and do it. My master had not expected to be receiving me today, he’d said, and so he might not understand the way a dimari had been trained to behave.
My master stopped, looking up at me with a furrowed brow, and I quickly looked away. I had most certainly overstepped my bounds, Aiden’s advice aside, and I braced myself to be disciplined for it.
But instead, my master just stared at me for a long moment, then said, “I see. A misunderstanding.” He started walking again, and I hastily dashed after him. “Okay, I’ll have a look at that when we get to the house.”
Okay, so that hadn’t gonetoobadly. Perhaps we would be able to fumble our way through this after all.
The house he’d spoken of wasn’t visible from the reception building, but as we rounded a curve in the dirt road, a one storey cottage came into view. It was surrounded by a low hedge and a chimney rose from one side of the roof. There was a pond in what could notionally be called the front garden and a collection of bushes with multi-coloured flowers on either side of the front gate. It looked charming, and cosy, and I was delighted with the idea that we would be living here together.
Wait, we would be heretogether, wouldn’t we? One of the worst things about my previous situation had been my master’s insistence that we live in separate residences – me, in a small room on the tenth floor, and him, in an opulent suite on the top floor of the building. I’d seen his apartment only once, a few days after I’d arrived, and I’d never been invited up there again.
Could it be that my master was going to leave me here alone, while he lived somewhere else? The thought horrified me. At least in the hotel, there had been the other staff to talk to. Here,I’d seen no one aside from the Solof lady at reception. Living entirely alone would be frighteningly isolating.
“Come on in and I’ll show you around,” my new master said, so I followed him up the path, since there was little else I could do at this point.
The front door opened into a hallway that ran the length of the cottage, with another door at the far end, which presumably led back outside into the rear garden. My master headed up the hallway, to the second last door on the left. “This will be your room,” he said, leading me inside. The room itself was unremarkable, though it also seemed quite comfortable, on first impressions. There was a double bed, a closet, a dresser and a mirror. The floor was wooden, though there was a rug at the end of the bed. My master set the bag down on the bed, then quickly led me out of the room again.
“This is my bedroom,” he said, showing me the room next door, the one at the furthest end of the hallway, and I felt a rush of relief to know that he was going to be living here too. His room was slightly larger than mine, and it contained far more personal effects – a small set of shelves with trinkets and photographs on it, a notebook on the nightstand, a few clothes tossed carelessly over a chair in the corner.
“This one’s empty,” he went on, pointing to the room across the hall from him. There was a bed and a dresser in there as well, but little sign of habitation. “Every now and then one of the casuals stays the night. Sometimes we have animals giving birth, or if there’s a storm, I like someone on hand to help with emergencies. It’s convenient to keep a room available for them.”
That, too, was further cause for relief. I was naturally an outgoing person, and I’d enjoyed chatting with the staff at the hotel – always out of sight of management, since Dorral seemed to be of the opinion that one could not work and talk at the same time. So the mention of extra staff who worked here meant Iwould likely have someone to talk to, even if it was rather more solitary than my previous home.
Home. Was it odd to think of it that way? Was this my home now? I had a new master, and he lived here, so didn’t that make this my home?
I gave myself a mental shake. I needed to stop second guessing everything and get on with learning my master’s habits and routines, so that I might serve him well enough that he decided to keep me. That was not something a dimari usually had to worry about. Normally, once we’d bonded with our masters, that was it. But I wasn’t bonded to this man. So arguably, if he wanted to send me away, he could.
“This is the bathroom,” my master said, opening the door to the next room down the hallway. “There are some towels in the closet in your room. Do you have your own toiletries in your bag, or do I need to get you some?”
“I have my own… Master,” I replied, saying the last word more softly than the rest. He was not happy with me calling him master, but addressing one’s master by their given name was entirely inappropriate. I hoped we would find a resolution to that problem sooner, rather than later.
But at the same time, I noticed an interesting conundrum. If my previous master – my real master – had told me not to call him master, I would have been instantly compelled to obey him. The nature of my bonding to him meant I was not capable of disobeying a direct order. But as much as I might desire to please my new master, I felt no such compulsion to obey him. So my ongoing use of the title was awkward, but at the moment, I couldn’t find a better solution to the problem.
My master merely nodded, apparently ignoring the title. He led me back to the other end of the house. “This is the living room. Winters can get cold, so the fireplace comes in handy. Given that it’s summer, I’m not using it much at the moment.”
I smiled as I took in the room. It was small but comfortable, with two long sofas, one facing the fireplace, and one facing the wall screen. There was a rack beside the fireplace, half-filled with logs, and I anticipated that chopping the wood and bringing it into the house would be one of my duties, come winter. It was also heartening to know there was a room where my master and I might be able to sit together, to talk about the day, or share ideas on how to care for a particular animal. I knew nothing about animal care at this point in time, but I was sure I could learn, given some appropriate instructions.
But perhaps I was making too many assumptions. Would I be allowed to sit in here? Or was this a space for my master alone? My previous master had never invited me into his private spaces. I wished I had some clearer instructions about what my new master expected of me.