+ Chapter Six +
Harper was considerably better in two weeks, much to his surprise. His right leg never did heal properly, however. It was sort of curved off to one side, but it was the best that could have been hoped for under such conditions.
He spent all of the first week confined to Tyr's room, curled up asleep with Jungle on his low pallet that stuck out, halfway underneath Tyr's wide bed. He slept soundly; the nightmares didn't come as often.
He would often awake to Tyr dressing quietly so as not to disturb him, or to Tyr crouching over his pallet, checking to see if his fever had returned or if he had caught a chill. He always spoke softly to Harper, well, Tyr's voice had always been a strong sort of soft, but now he spoke like he was trying to soothe a child, and there was something in his eyes that was troubling to Harper.
On the fourth day, Harper could get himself out of bed, but he could barely walk. Tyr had to lift him up and hold him upright, leading him around the room like an invalid. Harper was barely putting any of his own weight on his feet; he was completely supported by Tyr and was going through the motions until his body had relearned them. At first it was humiliating, and that manifested itself in anger until Tyr warned him in that veiled, alien, scary sort of threat. Panga had been in the room at the time. Tyr hadn't bothered to apologize for it later.
Once, after Harper had fallen, he cried a little, but he was determined to not let Panga or Tyr see. One of them did, however, and when his meal was sent to him that night there was a larger than usual helping of honey- tasting cake. Somebody felt guilty.
After the seventh day the physical therapy sessions only lasted a few minutes every morning. Tyr was constantly away, conferring with Okasha and Lord Amasai. Lady Geeia 'lent' Panga to wait on him while Harper was bedridden (Because apparently women on this planet didn't preen as much as everywhere else, Harper would think, a little bitterly), and Harper would spend most of the day alone in the big luxurious room, playing boredly with Jungle or staring out the wide windows at the beckoning ocean.
Sometimes Panga came back, alone, and sat with him, and talked quietly. They would sit on the little porch in the sun and Panga would comb her hair absently, while Harper watched. Her hair was so black, easily as dark as Tyr's, if not darker. It was so fine and shiny, and she had a little rosewood comb she said Representative Okasha had given to her. It wasn't like when Beka brushed her hair, with the big, black, wiry brush that she tore through her tangles. Trance used to preen a little like this with her fine hair before...well.
Panga told him that there was another Zay on the estate, a young mother in the kitchen named Zayla. So the slaves referred to them as "Zay in the Kitchen" and "Zay With the Limp" because Panga had been relaying the gossip from his physical therapy sessions onto Lim. She smiled at Harper's darkened look. "I don't tell him *everything*, Zay. Calm down." And that didn't make Harper feel any better about it.
He asked why Lim never came to visit.
"He's too busy," Panga said, simply. "Okasha's *really* mad at him. It's crazy. I've never seen anything like it." She looked down dispassionately at Jungle, who was on his hind legs, his little paws reaching up to her flicking hair. Harper scooped the kitten up and held him to his chest. "He's really sorry, you know," Panga went on.
"Lim? Why?"
"For getting you in trouble. For making you sick."
"Wasn't his fault."
"Tell that to him. You should see him. He's going out of his mind."
Harper let the kitten playfully love bite his proffered finger. "He shouldn't. Tell him I'm not mad or anything."
Panga looked at him strangely. "It's not that," She said, softly. "He doesn't believe me when I say you're okay now. Like you're walking and stuff. He thinks..." She looked away, back at the ocean, combing her hair absently. "Representative Okasha is very strict, that's all. And Lim is just...paranoid that Lord Anasazi is strict as well."
"Oh."
"But he's not."
It was a loaded sentence. Harper wasn't sure if it warranted a response, and if he was supposed to give one. Social nuances weren't exactly taught at the Boston Finishing School for Street Boys. He felt a little uncomfortable, like in this situation there probably shouldn't have been social nuances, anyway. Slavery and all. Seemed to level the playing field somewhat, at first glance anyway. Now, with those three little words, everything seemed...different. For one obscure, paranoid moment, Harper wondered why, exactly, she was there, acting friendly, asking questions. Almost flirting. If she knew how to flirt. And if she was trying to flirt, Harper had to admit she wasn't very good at it. The sad, unattractive green eyes didn't help. They were disconcerting.
"He's not...not strict." Harper tried to reason.
"He sp..." Panga trailed off, like it wasn't her place to say.
"Well what am I supposed to say to that?" Harper asked softly. "It's not exactly like I can control him, is it?"
"Maybe." Panga said, cryptically. And she didn't look at him. But her voice was sad. She blinked long-lashed, unattractive green eyes at him. Long- lashed. Long black lashes. He had never noticed that before. "Can I comb your hair for you?"
Harper started. "I...why?"
"It's tangled."
Harper was unaware it was long enough to be tangled. But he let her untangle it with her pale, skinny hands anyways.
"It takes me hours to get Lady Geeia's hair up," Panga explained, good naturedly. "But it'll only take me a second to fix yours."
--
"You have been sent a gift." Tyr said solemnly after Harper was walking on his own again.
"Huh?" Harper looked up from where he had been making Tyr's wide, needlessly elaborate bed. He leaned heavily on his good leg.
They had fallen easily enough into their roles as Harper had healed. Easily enough that they didn't stand out too much, anyway. Harper still didn't move the same way the other slaves did, he stood too tall, he talked too quickly, loudly, casually. He wasn't making his fragile friendship with Tyr anything more than a fragile friendship. There wasn't any more trust or respect than there was before.
Well, maybe a little. The older man had saved his life, again, after all.
For his part, Tyr filled the role almost flawlessly. There were parts of him that weren't completely committed, but Harper suspected he was the only one that could see those. Harper was the only one who lay in the same room as Tyr when he slept, after all, the only one who had begun timing his own breaths with the other man's, to comfort himself at night. Only he knew Tyr was pretending half the time he was asleep. Only he saw the planning and the calculation and the disgust and the confusion in Tyr's eyes, heard it in his voice.
And even he was only that familiar from having crewed with the man for three years.
Tyr stood at one of the deep wood chests, staring with amusement at the wrapped, soft package atop it. He was dressed ornately, in rich colours, a form fitting shirt with detachable sleeves, almost womanly were it worn by a slighter man. A short, skinny cloak hung down his back, affixed by silver clasps to his shoulders. Big boots. Big...big boots. Harper scratched his good calf with his bare right foot nervously. How could the big guy wear so much black in such heat, anyway? This planet was seriously fucked up beyond all reason.
"I had breakfast with the Lady Geeia this morning," Tyr started.
Oh, yeah. And Harper had sat around in the room for two hours, starving and supposed to be doing chores. He hurried to finish the bed.
"Our...host has sent you a present."
"Why?"
"Who knows." Tyr didn't elaborate but his tone said it all, really. He poked the package, amused. "But it would be unwise to appear ungrateful. Now come over here."
Harper felt his lip curl and he limped over to stand next to the Nietszchean, who was unwrapping the package slowly. The big man chuckled, sort of, when he held up the gift.
"Oh, for fuck's sake," Harper breathed. "That is serious creepy. Like ew."
It was a gown, a fine, small shimmering silver gown. It was feminine and helpless and...wrong in so many ways. Harper grimaced, and thought of Lord Amasai, who thankfully had left him alone during his convalescence, and grimaced again.
"Relax." Tyr chuckled. "It's your good clothes. For prayers. Even the slaves are expected to dress appropriately."
"Just do me a favour and kill me."
"When you've healed so quickly? You do my tutelage shame, little one."
"Tutelage? Who the fuck are you now, Rev Bem?"
It was a forced banter they put up when they went through still foreign ordeals such as this. A game to reinforce that they were still just crewmembers, acquaintances, casual comrades. Not Master and slave, not intimate...whatever they were supposed to be.
They had become quite adept at dropping the game if anyone else were to show up. The only things they weren't so adept at dropping yet were Harper's shoulders, eyes, and pride. But that would come in time, Tyr thought. It'd better.
Harper stood facing away from Tyr, his head inclined slightly. His hair had been growing, and it was already deceptively long under all that goo he usually wore. Harper held his hands at the base of his skull, holding his hair away from the ties in his garment. It struck Tyr as disturbingly similar to the stance taken by Kodiak prisoners at their execution.
He pushed the thought out of his head.
"It is needlessly generous of him," Tyr said, ominously, as the silver garment was draped over one wide shoulder. He started to undo the complicated ties on the back of Harper's garment, and help the boy into the delicate silver gown. "What should a Lord like him care what a slave wears to prayer?"
"Maybe he just likes me." Harper said with a sly grin, fake as it was. "Maybe he's just taken by my charm and good looks."
"Don't even joke about that." Tyr said, lightly, with just a hint of distaste. "I don't trust him as it is. I don't need bad judgment thrown into it."
Tyr finished slipping the fine garment over Harper's wiry body and turned the boy to look at him for inspection.
"This is about a 6.9 on the Richter Ew Scale," Harper said, making a trademark face, as he stood with his hands pulling the hem of the flimsy skirt further over his thighs.
It was shorter than the white garment, which fell to almost knee-length and to which Harper had become accustomed. It fell to just above mid-thigh, and tickled there uncomfortably.
It was also considerably tighter than the white gown, and was obviously not intended for work but decoration. It had no sleeves and had a high neck, and was silky enough that it clung here and there. It shimmered in a way that reminded Harper of the decorations Trance used to wear in her hair, but he refused to let himself think about that, or the similar silver hue on the outside of Andromeda's hull...
"You'll tear it," Tyr scolded, batting Harper's hands away from the hem of the skirt, his cloak fluttering as his shoulders moved.
When they were alone together Tyr hardly demanded anything of Harper. Usually, when he did demand, it was to tell him to be quiet or remember not to behave that way when others were around. There certainly wasn't as much demanding going on as there was on the Andromeda. No mock punches, no fond mussing of hair. There was worrying and a guilty distance. He didn't even have Harper help him dress, as was the duty of a valet and probably common amongst all the other nobles at this estate, even though he had to help Harper into the boy's own complicated garment. If anything, the distance and space between them, however friendly, disturbed Harper more than the game they played in front of everyone else.
"I hate it." Harper said.
"You shouldn't." Tyr replied, with authority. "Even you should be able to appreciate the work that went into making such a fine fabric. Besides, for a slave to even be asked along to prayers is quite the honour."
"Why?"
Tyr shrugged, rolling his eyes a little. "Part of the ceremony is thanking the deities for the gift of the 'othermen', the slaves. It's part of their creation story. It's all very useless," He waved a hand dismissively when Harper opened his mouth again to ask for an elaboration. "For a part during the ceremony slaves are honoured as prized possessions and...assets. They sit with their masters, on the right side, not segregated to the background like every other time."
"And not all the slaves get to go?"
"Well, obviously not, or half the courtyard would be full of Amasai's kitchen staff. They told me to bring you, now that you're well enough. Probably because you're the only other person with me, and they believe I value you more."
"Well, it's a damn shame we can't teach these backwards barbarians the truth then, eh?" Harper sneered. He didn't need another reminder that Tyr saw him as a burden. He didn't need any reminder of his life on the Andromeda, really. He was already starting to forget the feel of his own clothes. The taste of Sparky Cola was somewhat fainter in his memory. Bringing up old emotions just made that realization worse.
Tyr stood in the doorway for a moment, his head inclined slightly, regarding Harper. He had a similar expression to the one he wore most of the time Harper had been infested. Then he blinked, and Harper dropped his gaze and had to consciously drop his shoulders and his head, and he followed Tyr silently into the hallway.
There were three wings of the estate; Harper had only seen the inside of two. The bigger, main one stood in the middle, and held the dining hall, the library, the ready rooms, and all the private chambers of the nobility that resided or visited there. The two smaller wings on each side both had a courtyard. One of those wings held the kitchens, and the other the storage and stables. And the servants' quarters. The slaves far outnumbered the nobility here.
Prayers were held in the courtyard in the western block, facing the direction of the rising sun. They knelt in rows facing the western wall, row upon row of dark nobles, spotted here and there with a skinny, silvery pale companion.
Harper sat on Tyr's right hand side, in the shade. They knelt with their knees touching, sitting back on their calves. It was painful. And Harper was bored out of his skull. He stared up at the impossibly blue sky, boxed in by low white stucco walls and oppressively low-hanging green trees.
He pulled subconsciously at the hem of the short silver gown.
The ceremony wasn't even in the common tongue. It was in something mumbly and throaty and disturbingly alien, right when Harper was getting used to the local accent. His hands shook with restlessness on his bare knees, and he pulled again at the hem of his gown when it threatened to ride up too high.
When he did this for about the fifth time, Tyr struck him suddenly on the side of his bare thigh, silently. A red mark was left and Harper started, blue eyes widening and staring at Tyr.
Tyr glanced at him out of the corner of his eyes and his lips twitched ever so slightly, and Harper got the message to stop fidgeting and lower his damn eyes.
He spent the rest of the ceremony staring at the grass in front of his knees and surreptitiously playing with the hem of his slave garment, decorative as it was.
--
"You're going to help me, right?"
Lim had caught up with Harper in the halls as he limped back to Tyr's room; the younger boy had come to help Harper change back into his white work clothes.
"Rest day meals are harder to prepare," Lim said. "You'll come help us in the kitchen, right?" Harper wracked his brain, trying to remember if Tyr had told him to come back to the eastern courtyard. But he was pretty sure he was planning on hiding in the shade of Tyr's room, playing with Jungle and trying not to think about the Andromeda too much.
"Sure," He said as Lim did up the intricate laces of his white gown. "If you don't think I'll screw it up."
"Nah, you won't screw it up. You wouldn't screw anything up," Lim said, and there was just a hint of jealousy in his voice. Harper half expected him to say "Oh freakin' genius," like Beka sometimes did when she teased him, and it took him a while to get used to the idea that Lim wasn't going to say it.
When he was done, Lim lingered in front of the deep wooden chest while Harper sat on the floor in front of Tyr's bed, tying up his sandals over his slightly curved leg, and pushing Jungle back when the kitten tried to curl up in his lap.
"Did Lord Amasai send this to you?" The raven-haired boy fingered the silken silver gown.
"Yeah. Why?"
"Just wondering." Lim dropped his hand and stepped back a ways, his head bowed like it always was in this part of the estate. When they were in the servants' domain, or outside, he always had his young face towards the sun, and he graced everyone with a big smile, or a dramatic scowl. "Does Lord Amasai ever...look at you funny?"
Harper wondered about how to answer that question. "Not really," He lied.
"Oh," Lim said, and there was something funny in his tone of voice. Like he was surprised.
"Why?"
"Nothing." Lim shrugged it off, and dropped a scratch behind Jungle's ears, and jerked his head towards the door. "C'mon, they need us."
TBC
Harper was considerably better in two weeks, much to his surprise. His right leg never did heal properly, however. It was sort of curved off to one side, but it was the best that could have been hoped for under such conditions.
He spent all of the first week confined to Tyr's room, curled up asleep with Jungle on his low pallet that stuck out, halfway underneath Tyr's wide bed. He slept soundly; the nightmares didn't come as often.
He would often awake to Tyr dressing quietly so as not to disturb him, or to Tyr crouching over his pallet, checking to see if his fever had returned or if he had caught a chill. He always spoke softly to Harper, well, Tyr's voice had always been a strong sort of soft, but now he spoke like he was trying to soothe a child, and there was something in his eyes that was troubling to Harper.
On the fourth day, Harper could get himself out of bed, but he could barely walk. Tyr had to lift him up and hold him upright, leading him around the room like an invalid. Harper was barely putting any of his own weight on his feet; he was completely supported by Tyr and was going through the motions until his body had relearned them. At first it was humiliating, and that manifested itself in anger until Tyr warned him in that veiled, alien, scary sort of threat. Panga had been in the room at the time. Tyr hadn't bothered to apologize for it later.
Once, after Harper had fallen, he cried a little, but he was determined to not let Panga or Tyr see. One of them did, however, and when his meal was sent to him that night there was a larger than usual helping of honey- tasting cake. Somebody felt guilty.
After the seventh day the physical therapy sessions only lasted a few minutes every morning. Tyr was constantly away, conferring with Okasha and Lord Amasai. Lady Geeia 'lent' Panga to wait on him while Harper was bedridden (Because apparently women on this planet didn't preen as much as everywhere else, Harper would think, a little bitterly), and Harper would spend most of the day alone in the big luxurious room, playing boredly with Jungle or staring out the wide windows at the beckoning ocean.
Sometimes Panga came back, alone, and sat with him, and talked quietly. They would sit on the little porch in the sun and Panga would comb her hair absently, while Harper watched. Her hair was so black, easily as dark as Tyr's, if not darker. It was so fine and shiny, and she had a little rosewood comb she said Representative Okasha had given to her. It wasn't like when Beka brushed her hair, with the big, black, wiry brush that she tore through her tangles. Trance used to preen a little like this with her fine hair before...well.
Panga told him that there was another Zay on the estate, a young mother in the kitchen named Zayla. So the slaves referred to them as "Zay in the Kitchen" and "Zay With the Limp" because Panga had been relaying the gossip from his physical therapy sessions onto Lim. She smiled at Harper's darkened look. "I don't tell him *everything*, Zay. Calm down." And that didn't make Harper feel any better about it.
He asked why Lim never came to visit.
"He's too busy," Panga said, simply. "Okasha's *really* mad at him. It's crazy. I've never seen anything like it." She looked down dispassionately at Jungle, who was on his hind legs, his little paws reaching up to her flicking hair. Harper scooped the kitten up and held him to his chest. "He's really sorry, you know," Panga went on.
"Lim? Why?"
"For getting you in trouble. For making you sick."
"Wasn't his fault."
"Tell that to him. You should see him. He's going out of his mind."
Harper let the kitten playfully love bite his proffered finger. "He shouldn't. Tell him I'm not mad or anything."
Panga looked at him strangely. "It's not that," She said, softly. "He doesn't believe me when I say you're okay now. Like you're walking and stuff. He thinks..." She looked away, back at the ocean, combing her hair absently. "Representative Okasha is very strict, that's all. And Lim is just...paranoid that Lord Anasazi is strict as well."
"Oh."
"But he's not."
It was a loaded sentence. Harper wasn't sure if it warranted a response, and if he was supposed to give one. Social nuances weren't exactly taught at the Boston Finishing School for Street Boys. He felt a little uncomfortable, like in this situation there probably shouldn't have been social nuances, anyway. Slavery and all. Seemed to level the playing field somewhat, at first glance anyway. Now, with those three little words, everything seemed...different. For one obscure, paranoid moment, Harper wondered why, exactly, she was there, acting friendly, asking questions. Almost flirting. If she knew how to flirt. And if she was trying to flirt, Harper had to admit she wasn't very good at it. The sad, unattractive green eyes didn't help. They were disconcerting.
"He's not...not strict." Harper tried to reason.
"He sp..." Panga trailed off, like it wasn't her place to say.
"Well what am I supposed to say to that?" Harper asked softly. "It's not exactly like I can control him, is it?"
"Maybe." Panga said, cryptically. And she didn't look at him. But her voice was sad. She blinked long-lashed, unattractive green eyes at him. Long- lashed. Long black lashes. He had never noticed that before. "Can I comb your hair for you?"
Harper started. "I...why?"
"It's tangled."
Harper was unaware it was long enough to be tangled. But he let her untangle it with her pale, skinny hands anyways.
"It takes me hours to get Lady Geeia's hair up," Panga explained, good naturedly. "But it'll only take me a second to fix yours."
--
"You have been sent a gift." Tyr said solemnly after Harper was walking on his own again.
"Huh?" Harper looked up from where he had been making Tyr's wide, needlessly elaborate bed. He leaned heavily on his good leg.
They had fallen easily enough into their roles as Harper had healed. Easily enough that they didn't stand out too much, anyway. Harper still didn't move the same way the other slaves did, he stood too tall, he talked too quickly, loudly, casually. He wasn't making his fragile friendship with Tyr anything more than a fragile friendship. There wasn't any more trust or respect than there was before.
Well, maybe a little. The older man had saved his life, again, after all.
For his part, Tyr filled the role almost flawlessly. There were parts of him that weren't completely committed, but Harper suspected he was the only one that could see those. Harper was the only one who lay in the same room as Tyr when he slept, after all, the only one who had begun timing his own breaths with the other man's, to comfort himself at night. Only he knew Tyr was pretending half the time he was asleep. Only he saw the planning and the calculation and the disgust and the confusion in Tyr's eyes, heard it in his voice.
And even he was only that familiar from having crewed with the man for three years.
Tyr stood at one of the deep wood chests, staring with amusement at the wrapped, soft package atop it. He was dressed ornately, in rich colours, a form fitting shirt with detachable sleeves, almost womanly were it worn by a slighter man. A short, skinny cloak hung down his back, affixed by silver clasps to his shoulders. Big boots. Big...big boots. Harper scratched his good calf with his bare right foot nervously. How could the big guy wear so much black in such heat, anyway? This planet was seriously fucked up beyond all reason.
"I had breakfast with the Lady Geeia this morning," Tyr started.
Oh, yeah. And Harper had sat around in the room for two hours, starving and supposed to be doing chores. He hurried to finish the bed.
"Our...host has sent you a present."
"Why?"
"Who knows." Tyr didn't elaborate but his tone said it all, really. He poked the package, amused. "But it would be unwise to appear ungrateful. Now come over here."
Harper felt his lip curl and he limped over to stand next to the Nietszchean, who was unwrapping the package slowly. The big man chuckled, sort of, when he held up the gift.
"Oh, for fuck's sake," Harper breathed. "That is serious creepy. Like ew."
It was a gown, a fine, small shimmering silver gown. It was feminine and helpless and...wrong in so many ways. Harper grimaced, and thought of Lord Amasai, who thankfully had left him alone during his convalescence, and grimaced again.
"Relax." Tyr chuckled. "It's your good clothes. For prayers. Even the slaves are expected to dress appropriately."
"Just do me a favour and kill me."
"When you've healed so quickly? You do my tutelage shame, little one."
"Tutelage? Who the fuck are you now, Rev Bem?"
It was a forced banter they put up when they went through still foreign ordeals such as this. A game to reinforce that they were still just crewmembers, acquaintances, casual comrades. Not Master and slave, not intimate...whatever they were supposed to be.
They had become quite adept at dropping the game if anyone else were to show up. The only things they weren't so adept at dropping yet were Harper's shoulders, eyes, and pride. But that would come in time, Tyr thought. It'd better.
Harper stood facing away from Tyr, his head inclined slightly. His hair had been growing, and it was already deceptively long under all that goo he usually wore. Harper held his hands at the base of his skull, holding his hair away from the ties in his garment. It struck Tyr as disturbingly similar to the stance taken by Kodiak prisoners at their execution.
He pushed the thought out of his head.
"It is needlessly generous of him," Tyr said, ominously, as the silver garment was draped over one wide shoulder. He started to undo the complicated ties on the back of Harper's garment, and help the boy into the delicate silver gown. "What should a Lord like him care what a slave wears to prayer?"
"Maybe he just likes me." Harper said with a sly grin, fake as it was. "Maybe he's just taken by my charm and good looks."
"Don't even joke about that." Tyr said, lightly, with just a hint of distaste. "I don't trust him as it is. I don't need bad judgment thrown into it."
Tyr finished slipping the fine garment over Harper's wiry body and turned the boy to look at him for inspection.
"This is about a 6.9 on the Richter Ew Scale," Harper said, making a trademark face, as he stood with his hands pulling the hem of the flimsy skirt further over his thighs.
It was shorter than the white garment, which fell to almost knee-length and to which Harper had become accustomed. It fell to just above mid-thigh, and tickled there uncomfortably.
It was also considerably tighter than the white gown, and was obviously not intended for work but decoration. It had no sleeves and had a high neck, and was silky enough that it clung here and there. It shimmered in a way that reminded Harper of the decorations Trance used to wear in her hair, but he refused to let himself think about that, or the similar silver hue on the outside of Andromeda's hull...
"You'll tear it," Tyr scolded, batting Harper's hands away from the hem of the skirt, his cloak fluttering as his shoulders moved.
When they were alone together Tyr hardly demanded anything of Harper. Usually, when he did demand, it was to tell him to be quiet or remember not to behave that way when others were around. There certainly wasn't as much demanding going on as there was on the Andromeda. No mock punches, no fond mussing of hair. There was worrying and a guilty distance. He didn't even have Harper help him dress, as was the duty of a valet and probably common amongst all the other nobles at this estate, even though he had to help Harper into the boy's own complicated garment. If anything, the distance and space between them, however friendly, disturbed Harper more than the game they played in front of everyone else.
"I hate it." Harper said.
"You shouldn't." Tyr replied, with authority. "Even you should be able to appreciate the work that went into making such a fine fabric. Besides, for a slave to even be asked along to prayers is quite the honour."
"Why?"
Tyr shrugged, rolling his eyes a little. "Part of the ceremony is thanking the deities for the gift of the 'othermen', the slaves. It's part of their creation story. It's all very useless," He waved a hand dismissively when Harper opened his mouth again to ask for an elaboration. "For a part during the ceremony slaves are honoured as prized possessions and...assets. They sit with their masters, on the right side, not segregated to the background like every other time."
"And not all the slaves get to go?"
"Well, obviously not, or half the courtyard would be full of Amasai's kitchen staff. They told me to bring you, now that you're well enough. Probably because you're the only other person with me, and they believe I value you more."
"Well, it's a damn shame we can't teach these backwards barbarians the truth then, eh?" Harper sneered. He didn't need another reminder that Tyr saw him as a burden. He didn't need any reminder of his life on the Andromeda, really. He was already starting to forget the feel of his own clothes. The taste of Sparky Cola was somewhat fainter in his memory. Bringing up old emotions just made that realization worse.
Tyr stood in the doorway for a moment, his head inclined slightly, regarding Harper. He had a similar expression to the one he wore most of the time Harper had been infested. Then he blinked, and Harper dropped his gaze and had to consciously drop his shoulders and his head, and he followed Tyr silently into the hallway.
There were three wings of the estate; Harper had only seen the inside of two. The bigger, main one stood in the middle, and held the dining hall, the library, the ready rooms, and all the private chambers of the nobility that resided or visited there. The two smaller wings on each side both had a courtyard. One of those wings held the kitchens, and the other the storage and stables. And the servants' quarters. The slaves far outnumbered the nobility here.
Prayers were held in the courtyard in the western block, facing the direction of the rising sun. They knelt in rows facing the western wall, row upon row of dark nobles, spotted here and there with a skinny, silvery pale companion.
Harper sat on Tyr's right hand side, in the shade. They knelt with their knees touching, sitting back on their calves. It was painful. And Harper was bored out of his skull. He stared up at the impossibly blue sky, boxed in by low white stucco walls and oppressively low-hanging green trees.
He pulled subconsciously at the hem of the short silver gown.
The ceremony wasn't even in the common tongue. It was in something mumbly and throaty and disturbingly alien, right when Harper was getting used to the local accent. His hands shook with restlessness on his bare knees, and he pulled again at the hem of his gown when it threatened to ride up too high.
When he did this for about the fifth time, Tyr struck him suddenly on the side of his bare thigh, silently. A red mark was left and Harper started, blue eyes widening and staring at Tyr.
Tyr glanced at him out of the corner of his eyes and his lips twitched ever so slightly, and Harper got the message to stop fidgeting and lower his damn eyes.
He spent the rest of the ceremony staring at the grass in front of his knees and surreptitiously playing with the hem of his slave garment, decorative as it was.
--
"You're going to help me, right?"
Lim had caught up with Harper in the halls as he limped back to Tyr's room; the younger boy had come to help Harper change back into his white work clothes.
"Rest day meals are harder to prepare," Lim said. "You'll come help us in the kitchen, right?" Harper wracked his brain, trying to remember if Tyr had told him to come back to the eastern courtyard. But he was pretty sure he was planning on hiding in the shade of Tyr's room, playing with Jungle and trying not to think about the Andromeda too much.
"Sure," He said as Lim did up the intricate laces of his white gown. "If you don't think I'll screw it up."
"Nah, you won't screw it up. You wouldn't screw anything up," Lim said, and there was just a hint of jealousy in his voice. Harper half expected him to say "Oh freakin' genius," like Beka sometimes did when she teased him, and it took him a while to get used to the idea that Lim wasn't going to say it.
When he was done, Lim lingered in front of the deep wooden chest while Harper sat on the floor in front of Tyr's bed, tying up his sandals over his slightly curved leg, and pushing Jungle back when the kitten tried to curl up in his lap.
"Did Lord Amasai send this to you?" The raven-haired boy fingered the silken silver gown.
"Yeah. Why?"
"Just wondering." Lim dropped his hand and stepped back a ways, his head bowed like it always was in this part of the estate. When they were in the servants' domain, or outside, he always had his young face towards the sun, and he graced everyone with a big smile, or a dramatic scowl. "Does Lord Amasai ever...look at you funny?"
Harper wondered about how to answer that question. "Not really," He lied.
"Oh," Lim said, and there was something funny in his tone of voice. Like he was surprised.
"Why?"
"Nothing." Lim shrugged it off, and dropped a scratch behind Jungle's ears, and jerked his head towards the door. "C'mon, they need us."
TBC