Page 13 of Xel: Broken Bond

Last of all, we went into the kitchen. There was a small, round table that could seat four at one end of the room, then the kitchen itself was surprisingly spacious. It was neat, though there were a few dirty dishes in the sink and the floor looked like it could use a good mopping. My master had not yet given me any specific chores to do, but in most households, a dimari would be expected to keep the house clean and tidy. If I’d been trained as a domestic servant, I would also be expected to run the administrative side of the house – paying bills, ordering groceries, arranging repairs – but given that I’d been trained as an erotic companion, I wasn’t sure what my master would expect of me. I hardly thought he would have any great use for my sexual skills, given that he lived here alone.

“There’s plenty of food in the fridge and the pantry,” he said, opening cupboards and showing me where things were kept. “So you’re free to make your own breakfast and lunch, however that fits around your work schedule. I’ll plan out some shifts for you this afternoon. When it comes to dinner, it’s probably easier ifI cook something for both of us… Actually, do you know much about cooking? I read somewhere that dimari are usually pretty good at it.”

My chest swelled a little at the implied praise. I hadn’t been allowed to do much in the kitchen at the hotel other than chopping vegetables. “Yes, Master. I’ve had extensive training in cooking for a variety of cultures. I would be very happy to cook for you.”

“Awesome,” my master said, looking relieved. “I mean, I can slap a meal onto a plate, but it’s never terribly fancy. Oh, and while I think of it, there’s a grocery delivery service that links to your… Well, no, itwilllink to your comm, once I get you one,” he interrupted himself. “In the meantime, you can use this one,” he said, gesturing to the house-comm that was fixed to the wall near the entrance to the kitchen. “If you need anything that I don’t already have, you can just add it to the list here, see?” He showed me the buttons to press… but sadly, they meant little to me. I couldn’t read the script the comm was set up to use. “They deliver twice a week to the reception desk, and Bo lets me know when it’s arrived. I don’t tend to…” He stopped suddenly, rubbing the back of his neck as he looked around sheepishly. “I don’t tend to want to go out much,” he finished quietly.

I simply nodded, not sure what else to say. It was not my place to question my master’s schedule.

“Okay, so I’ve got to go and feed the animals, but before I do, do you have any questions? Is there anything else you need?”

Oh, thank goodness he’d asked. Interrupting one’s master was very rude, but I was still attempting to follow the normal protocols of politeness and respect, regardless of the fact that I was not compelled to obey my master. And the one task he’d explicitly given me to do would have been impossible without the chance to clarify the problems. “I’m sorry, Master, but I cannot read Alliance Common. I was taught the Eumadian,Basubian and Fortusian scripts. If we can change the comm to display one of those, then I should have no problem ordering groceries.”

“Oh heck, I hadn’t even realised… Oh, that’s something else Aiden said,” he pulled himself up, his expression turning somewhat alarmed. “If I ever give you an order to do something, and it’s causing you pain, or it’s going to harm you in some way, I want you to tell me straight away. It’s never myintentionto harm you, but while I’m learning about your skills and your culture, I might accidentally tell you to do something dangerous. So if I do, please tell me. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Master,” I said, feeling rather pleased about the instruction. If he’d been my true master, I would have found the notion odd. Why would anyone buy a dimari if they didn’t know how they were trained, or what their physical needs were? But my new master had not intended to buy me, and so it was perfectly reasonable that he didn’t know much about dimari training. And it was reassuring to know he was concerned about my safety.

“Great. And yes, you can change the script that’s displayed. You just press this button here,” he said, demonstrating, “then it’ll respond to voice commands to change the script.”

Fortunately, thanks to the translator implanted behind my right ear, I was able to understand the language my master was speaking, or any one of about four hundred other languages that had been programmed into the handy little device.

“I’ve got to go and feed the animals, but I’ll leave you here to settle in. You must have a lot on your mind. And I’ll read that instruction manual this evening,” he added, letting me know he hadn’t forgotten. “And then tomorrow, I’ll show you around the sanctuary and start teaching you how to care for all the different species.”

He headed out the door, leaving me alone in the house. I felt an immediate sense of loss, and a crushing loneliness as the silence settled in around me. So this was going to be much like my last position, I realised, with more disappointment than I wanted to admit. One more master who barely spoke to me and who didn’t want my company.

I went back to my room, intending to unpack my meagre belongings. It was not appropriate to think ill of one’s master, and though I had heard tales during my training of masters who showered their dimari with gifts, who treasured their company, who saw them as members of their family, that had not been my experience since I’d arrived on Rendol 4.

But once I got to my room, I couldn’t quite face the task of unpacking the few items in my bag, and the accompanying reflections that one small bag of clothes was the sum total of my achievements for the past three years. I sank onto the bed and stared out the window at the pale leaves of the tree just outside, and beyond it, the flowers adorning the row of bushes at the edge of the garden. Under different circumstances, this would be a beautiful place. Peaceful. Happy. But what was the point of beauty if there was no one to share it with?

My life had changed so thoroughly and so dramatically in the course of just a single day. And yet all the things that really mattered had unfortunately seemed to stay very much the same.

CHAPTER SEVEN

COLE

It was starting to get dark by the time I made it back to the house. During the afternoon feeding, I’d found a loose fence post in the camel paddock. Thankfully we only had one camel, and I had an interested farmer who was going to come and look at him next week, but I’d known that if I didn’t fix it, by morning I would likely have a hole in the fence and a camel on the loose. Jeffery was a docile creature, but also one prone to mischief, so I’d spent the better part of an hour replacing the post and repairing the wire.

I hoped Xel had had some time to look around the house and garden, and to settle things in his mind a bit. It must have been a hell of a shock to lose his master, and I’d taken my cue from the way I let new animals settle into the sanctuary; put them somewhere safe and then leave them alone for a couple of hours to calm down. I hoped the idea had been as effective with Xel.

But at the same time, it had occurred to me while I’d been working that he hadn’t seemed anywhere near as upset as I’d expected. He’d been quiet and a little anxious, but based on the reports I’d read, a dimari who lost their master should havebeen absolutelydevastated. But Xel was still speaking, he was asking questions, he’d said he would behappyto cook for me. That hardly sounded like a man in the throes of despair. So was I missing something, or was Xel justreallygood at pretending nothing was wrong?

But the idea also occurred to me that perhaps I didn’t know as much about dimari as I thought I did. The dimari were all Vangravians, sold at birth to another species called the Eumadians, who trained them through to adulthood as slaves, then sold them to a variety of species who had far less of an aversion to slavery than the Alliance did. Most of what I’d learned had come from a variety of news articles, but since we had very few dimari on Rendol 4, a lot of the journalists had had to reach out to other species to learn more about how the dimari were trained or how they reacted to various situations. But that did create a certain amount of room for error in their research. In which case, I really needed to read that instruction manual Aiden had given me.

Inside the house, I scrubbed the dirt off my hands and face in the bathroom, then stuck my head into Xel’s room, not having seen any sign of him in the kitchen or living room. He was sitting on his bed, staring out the window at the darkening garden… and I noticed that his bag was sitting on the bed beside him, open, but not unpacked.

Had he been sitting here all afternoon?

Well, that was more like the display of grief I’d been expecting, and I instantly felt the urge to comfort him. As well as I could, at least. I was never going to grieve for my uncle, no matter how much empathy I wanted to show Xel.

“Xel?” I said, taking another step into the room. “How are you doing? Is everything okay?”

He stood up abruptly and turned to face me, plastering a smile to his face. “Yes, Master. Is there anything you need help with?”

That, at least, was an act put on to appease me. But would it be more helpful to call him out on it, or to play along? I wanted to help him deal with all the startling changes in his life… but based on what I’d learned from working with animals, sometimes they needed to feel safe and secure before they could start learning to trust their owner. So maybe Xel needed a sense of routine and security before I could start probing the deeper workings of his brain. I thought back over what Aiden had said. Dimari needed to be praised for doing their work well. Okay, so in order to have something to praise him for, I needed to give him something to do.

“Would you like to come and help me make dinner?” I asked him. As soon as the words left my mouth, I felt like kicking myself. One of the key things Aiden had told me earlier was tonotask a dimari what they wanted. I was totellhim, not ask him.

“I’d like you to chop some vegetables for me,” I amended my previous statement, expecting Xel to perk up at being given something to do.