Chapter Four
Kenner could not blame the woman for the confusion and fear she felt. She had proved to be a skilled, intelligent fighter today, but also not the kind of person who could hurt another without having it affect her. Splendid as it had been to watch her fight with the Firuzian, he had not missed the tragically vacant look on her face after the fight was over or the mechanical way she bowed and left the Pit. And her former mistress clearly hadn’t warned her of this new change in her life, most likely out of spite. The woman was furious when the Emperor made it clear pleasing the Kinai with a tribute took precedence over her wishes, but she did not hold enough power to fight him on this.
Thus, that afternoon, money and papers had exchanged hands, and this voluptuous beauty now belonged to him.
He resented having to keep himself as her master, even if just nominally, but there was no such thing as manumission in the Skatian laws, so the only way she could have her freedom was to remain Kenner’s slave on paper, and to get as far away from the Empire as possible.
“What is your name?” he asked, but she only seemed more confused at the question.
“They call me Hele,” she replied, clearly going with the safe answer.
“Yes, but what’s your name?” he repeated.
Her eyes narrowed a bit suspiciously, but eventually, he got his answer. “Teresa,” she told him. “My name is Teresa.”
“Teresa,” he repeated, committing her name to memory. “I am Kenner,” he told her. “I’m supposing from your reaction to me that you haven’t been introduced to the Kinai,” he mused, taking his seat again, and gestured to the chair across from his, a small, ornate table between them. Teresa threw him another wary look but sat down.
“I’ve never heard of the Kinai,” she told him.
“I’m not surprised,” he admitted. “We are... a private folk. But this is what you need to know. In our homeland, we hold no slaves, do not indulge in blood sport, have no caste system, and grant positions based on merit rather than bloodline or gender. I must take – and keep – you there against your will, but otherwise, you are free to organize your life as you see fit. If you prove yourself useful, you’ll easily find gainful employ, but I’ll support you until then, however long it takes. I understand if trusting me doesn’t come easily to you, but I fear you have no choice in this matter. You either make Kinai your home, or you’ll just be captured and re-sold again.”
She looked down to her lap, where her hands rested, thinking his words through, and he let her. All things considered, she was taking this remarkably well. “Why don’t you just take me back to my home?” she asked, raising her head, her large, russet eyes meeting his again. “Since it seems like freeing me is the reason you bought me.”
He sighed. “I’m afraid that simply isn’t possible,” he told her, honest in his regret. “A passage fee for the Portal is more than I can afford, especially now.”
Teresa looked defeated. “No... that would simply be too much to ask for,” she said, with a sigh of bitter resignation. “But I suppose it’s for the best. I have no idea how I’d get to Earth from the Crossroads.”
It was Kenner’s turn to be confused. “Earth?” he asked, repeating the only word she had said that was not of the Common Tongue.
“My planet,” she explained. “I was... I’m sure you have them on Elamaren, but I don’t know the word for the profession. ‘An officer of the law’, we call it. We investigate crimes, locate and apprehend criminals and make sure the laws of the land are obeyed.” Kenner nodded in understanding, but said nothing, allowing her to tell him her tale. “I had just started my second year when my partner and I were called in to look into what we thought was someone’s bad idea of a joke. See, all this – life on other planets, spaceships, sentient races other than our own – it’s fiction on our planet, nothing more. But it turned out that the person who called us to investigate the strange lights and incredibly fast aerial vehicles on the edge of our city wasn't joking.”
She looked sad. “I don’t know who took me exactly. They hit my partner and me with a small cloud of gas that made us lose consciousness, and I didn’t wake until I was in a cage at the Crossroads. It was... a maddening experience. No one understood me... I understood no one... they hit me to force me to do as they wished... and my partner was already gone. I don’t know if he died or was sold before I made it to the slavers’ block, but... honestly? I don’t know which I should hope for. He was a good man. He didn’t deserve this.”
“Neither did you,” Kenner told her, hoping to give her some comfort. It was not something he was good at – fighting, leadership, strategy, those were his strong suits. When it came to emotions, he always felt like a bumbling oaf.
But what a tragedy, what stress Teresa and her partner had been forced to endure. He tried to imagine himself so utterly lost, his entire world turned upside-down, completely out of any sort of control over his own destiny, and found himself amazed by Teresa’s inner strength. To survive such profound duress and adapt as well as she had showed an indomitable spirit.
“You speak the Common Tongue very well,” he complimented her, feeling the need to lift the conversation and make her feel better about herself. Her eyes were still sad, but she offered him half a smile and nodded. “I’ve always learned languages with ease,” she told him. “But Lady Esplyn favored my physical talents.”
“Of which you have an abundance, it would seem,” Kenner said, cursing the Skatian bitch for forcing Teresa into the Pit when she could’ve used her sharp mind instead. It would’ve made her no less a slave – and perhaps prevented them from ever meeting – but her life would’ve been incomparably easier if she had been trained as a clerk or a tutor rather than as a fighter.
Teresa shrugged. “Military training,” she told him. “I had no family other than my parents, and when they died, I had just reached the age of maturity. I had nowhere to go and no way to fend for myself, and the military in my homeland was recruiting, so...” Hearing this only made Kenner’s opinion of her grow more. She was a survivor, this one, resilient and well-versed in making do with what she had.
She will fit perfectly among the Kinai, he thought, with no small amount of pride.
“That is good,” he told her, “We are very much a military-minded nation.” Teresa cocked an eyebrow quizzically, allowing him the first glimpse into her sense of humor.
“A private, yet military-minded nation...” she mused. “Many would call that a historical oddity.”
Kenner barked a hearty laugh, his head falling back, which seemed to help relax her a bit more. “I doubt many nations have our particular peculiarities,” he said. “But those are something you cannot know until you are one of us.” With that, he stood up, and Teresa followed suit, probably out of habit. “Something tells me it won’t be long before that happens, though,” he told her, with his best attempt at a reassuring smile. “You should rest now,” he said, gesturing to the bed. “We leave before dawn, and the voyage to Kinai is long.”
A flash of worry crossed Teresa’s face. “And you will sleep...?”
Kenner brushed his knuckles against her soft cheek. “Elsewhere,” he told her. “Don’t worry. The next time you bed someone, it will be because you want to.” The idea of her giving herself to another man woke something ferocious and possessive inside of him, something that made him want to snatch her and take her far away from the rest of the world, but he knew that was the beast in him talking, and he was too old and too well-disciplined to allow its wild passions to influence him. For Teresa to have the freedom to choose whom she shared her opulent body with was more important than whether or not she would choose him.
“Lady Esplyn kept everything you once used,” he told her as he walked to the door. “But I have provided fitting garments for travel, and we’ll see about finding you more once we land in Kinai. They’re in the bedside cabinet.” He opened the door and turned to her once again. “Sleep well, Teresa.” He smiled before forcing himself to finally leave and find a sofa to spend the night on.