CHAPTER FOUR
AIDEN
We worked for the rest of the afternoon and well into the evening.
The dimari nurse could be paired up with a doctor who worked at the Central Hon Hospital, and with the best intentions in the world, I couldn’t have dreamed up a more suitable pairing.
The three domestic servants were the easiest to place, given that all they needed was a decent sized house to look after and they would be happy.
Throw a few children into the mix and they’d be set for life.
But where to put the erotic companion was a far more difficult dilemma to solve, and by the time we’d scrolled through no fewer than fifty profiles, I still wasn’t convinced there was anyone here who would be a suitable master.
“I think maybe the best thing to do would be to send a bulk notification to everyone else on the list, letting them know that we have an erotic companion and asking them if they know anyone who might be suitable,” I said to Kade…
just as his stomach rumbled loudly. I glanced at the clock and saw it was ten past seven.
With everything else that had been going on today, we hadn’t stopped or eaten anything since about midday.
“Okay, it’s time to get something to eat,” I announced, shutting off the five different screens I currently had open.
“I could use a break anyway. My brain’s just running in circles. ”
Kade said nothing, which I took to be disagreement with my plan.
“We’ll come back and have another look after dinner,” I told him.
“But that probably means we’ll end up sleeping here tonight.
” Kade and I had a dedicated room in the barracks, for the odd occasions when we were required to spend the night on base.
It was a rather spartan place, with little more than a bed and a dresser, and a bathroom shared with the rest of the dorm, but it served its purpose.
“How many of the potential masters have replied?” he asked, as we headed out of the administration wing and towards the cafeteria.
“You’re concerned about us not finding enough masters in time?
” I asked him. It was rare for Kade to offer any real objections to any of my plans, but if I paid attention, it was usually possible to parse out how he was feeling about things from the sideways comments he made.
Being restricted to such indirect communication could be incredibly frustrating.
But that was one of the reasons I had to be so careful about who to assign the new dimari to.
Kade was a major asset in combat, or when I simply needed an extra pair of hands to get any given job done, but it also took a huge amount of energy making sure I was always giving appropriate consideration to someone who wasn’t able to advocate for their own needs.
“I’m concerned that not everyone we’ve contacted so far will accept a new dimari. There’s a difference between accepting one in theory, versus the reality of one showing up on your doorstep.”
I nodded. “Either way, we still need food. And we have two definite masters already.” The new owners for the nurse and the pilot had both accepted the offer, and both of them were going to come to the base tomorrow morning to pick up their new charges.
“Oh, shit,” I muttered, as we came around the corner into the cafeteria.
“We’ll have to find a safe place to activate the dimari, then have them meet their masters without the risk of them imprinting on the wrong person. I hadn’t even thought of that.”
“That’s easy,” Kade said. He looked pointedly in the direction of the cafeteria counter, when I didn’t move.
Gathering my wits, I headed for the end of the long counter, collecting a tray from the stack.
“We can put them in one of the other conference rooms,” Kade said.
“There’s an intercom system you can use to activate them, then send their new master into the room alone for the imprinting.
” He picked up his own tray, but didn’t go any further.
Despite numerous discussions on the topic, he was still very much inclined to wait for me to serve myself first at mealtimes, only willing to take his own share after I had enough.
Not wanting to hold up our conversation, I moved swiftly along the counter, collecting a bowl of chicken pasta, a salad and a cup of fruit for dessert.
Kade made slightly different choices – a club sandwich with thin sliced camel meat, salad and cheese, and a slice of carrot cake.
I was privately pleased with what he’d chosen, if only because it was different from what I was having.
Early on in our relationship, the choices of food to eat had overwhelmed him, and he’d either have chosen the exact same thing as I had, or else preferred it if I’d chosen something for him.
Now, he was at least comfortable enough with the freedom he had to choose his own food.
As we sat down at a table near the side of the room, I wanted to continue the conversation about activating the dimari, but the instant I set my tray down, I realised I hadn’t checked the video feed of the dimari in the conference room even once since we’d farewelled Henderson.
But just as I went to activate the feed, a notification came through on my comm.
I opened it and read a short message from one of the people who’d been offered a domestic servant, saying she’d changed her mind and no longer wanted one.
“Oh, fuck,” I muttered, the urgent and necessary tasks piling up until they seemed overwhelming.
That was one more dimari to re-home, plus I needed to check all the other messages to see where each situation was up to, plus the video feed.
And tomorrow, there would be training the new masters and possibly screening someone to take the erotic companion…
I felt a hand on my arm and looked up to see Kade peering at me in concern.
“Is Henderson still here?” he asked. While it wasn’t exactly routine, it wasn’t uncommon for Henderson to spend the night at the base, particularly if there was something unusual going on.
I shot him a quick message and got a rapid reply.
“Yes, he’s still here. He’s planning on spending the night here. ”
“Then perhaps after dinner, I could go and talk to him about how to safely activate the dimari while you reply to some of the messages from the potential masters?” Kade suggested.
“And as far as the erotic companion goes, I think it’s a good strategy to reach out to the rest of the database for suggestions.
A lot of them already understand the complexities of an erotic companion’s needs. ”
That was true. In the interests of efficiency and accuracy, everyone on the database had already read the lengthy instruction manual I’d put together designed to teach new owners how to care for their dimari, and detailing all of the dimari’s complex emotional needs.
There was an entire chapter dedicated to how to approach sex, and the fact that sexual activity was an intrinsic part of a dimari’s reward system.
“Okay. Good plan,” I said, trying to calm down a little.
Yes, there was a lot to do. But that didn’t mean I had to do it all alone.
“I’m going to check the video feed,” I said, shoving a forkful of pasta into my mouth.
I activated the link security had set up, simultaneously setting the screen to privacy mode, so that no one else in the cafeteria would be able to see it.
At first glance, the scene in the room was unremarkable.
The three large tables had been pushed to one side, and the rest of the space was taken up with mattresses laid out in two neat rows.
Three of the dimari were sitting at the table, eating, and I was relieved to find that catering had remembered to take them some dinner.
The rest of them seemed to have finished their food, and four of them were standing at the foot of their beds, in a standard ‘at ease’ posture; feet apart, hands clasped behind their back.
That, I’d learned some months ago, was perfectly normal for a dimari who was waiting to meet their master.
Kade had explained to me a while ago that back when he’d first met me, he’d spent several days essentially doing nothing more than standing in his crate, waiting for his master to arrive.
It meant the dimari were calm and comfortable, and as rigid as the postures might have looked, it was an indication that things were going well.
But one dimari wasn’t behaving like the others, and I was somehow unsurprised to see it was the tall, black one.
And yes, his scales were still set to that jet black pool of nothingness.
Not every dimari was capable of getting the pigments in their scales that dark, but Jai had clearly mastered it.
He looked almost surreal, on the holographic screen.
But it wasn’t his colouring that was the cause of my concern.
Rather, it was the fact that he was… sitting on his mattress.
There was nothing remarkable about his posture.
He was sitting still, cross-legged, staring at the far wall.
He didn’t seem distressed or uncomfortable.
Literally the only noteworthy thing about it was that he was behaving differently from the other dimari.
But in a system as regimented as dimari training, I’d learned that any variation from their standard baseline was cause for concern.
“What do you make of this?” I asked Kade, tilting the image towards him.
He stared at it, his face darkening into a deep frown. “That is most certainly not normal,” he said. “Did the doctor check all the dimari? Was she certain there were no injuries?”
I hastily pulled up the report Henderson had sent me earlier in the afternoon.
“Nothing out of the ordinary reported. The harnesses in the crate kept them in their seats until the crate was safely retrieved, and none of them mentioned any pain or injuries when questioned. Major Toth says she specifically told them she wanted to make sure they were in good health to be presented to their masters – which is the driving force for an unbonded dimari – so if there were any problems, she’s confident they would have told her. Would you disagree with that?”
“No, that’s exactly what I would have done,” Kade confirmed. “They won’t go to sleep until you turn the lights out, so even if Jai was tired, he should still be maintaining normal protocols. It’s very odd," he concluded, with no further suggestions as to what the problem might be.”
I thought about what to do for a moment, while I shovelled forkfuls of pasta into my mouth.
Perhaps I was overreacting – sitting on a mattress was hardly a punishable offence, after all – but if I’d learned nothing else over the past year, it was that dimari did not stray from their training without a good reason.
“I’m going to ask Major Toth to go and give Jai another check over,” I said, pulling up Toth’s contact in my comm.
“Just to make sure nothing’s physically wrong.
” I was almost hoping that she would find something wrong with the dimari – a strained muscle, perhaps, or a bruise he hadn’t mentioned earlier?
Because if there was nothing physically wrong with him, then it almost certainly indicated that there was something psychologically wrong.
And without a bonded master able to take responsibility for Jai’s mental state, I had absolutely no idea what to do about that.