CHAPTER ONE #2
“Beastly man,” Kathy hissed. Dorral was the general manager of the hotel, and people tended to like him even less than they liked my master.
“Xel, you listen to me. I want you to stay here… No, wait, I’ve got a better idea.
Don’t go anywhere,” she ordered me, then rushed off across the room.
A minute later, she was back, with a Solof man in tow.
He had lavender-coloured skin and a lean build, with vivid purple eyes.
“Xel, this is Captain Moss. Captain, this is Xel, Mr Ronson’s dimari.
I’m very concerned that without a master, he’s going to be feeling rather lost and directionless, and might be likely to wander off unannounced.
So would you be able to help me keep an eye on him?
There’s a lot going on at the moment, and it would be easy for him to be overlooked. ”
Overlooked? Wasn’t that normally a good thing?
I looked down at the scales on my arms. I usually adjusted my scales so they were purple while I was working, to blend in and let most of the guests believe I was a Solof.
But now, I let the colour fade, returning to my natural sky-blue.
My master had never said anything in particular about my colouring, but given his general displeasure at being disturbed, I had decided early on in our relationship that blending in with the other species here would be a good idea.
“I’ll keep an eye on him, ma’am,” Captain Moss said, not batting an eyelid at my colour change. “But if you’ll excuse me for a moment, I need to go and speak to the paramedics before they leave.”
He marched quickly away, and Kathy watched him go, then pursed her lips, the way she did when she was annoyed.
Normally, I would check my own behaviour if I saw that expression, wondering if I was the one annoying her…
but this time, I couldn’t quite be bothered.
Given that my master was dead, I probably didn’t work here anymore.
So it was hardly going to matter if Kathy got annoyed with me.
“Xel, I need you to listen to me,” she said, turning back to me once the Captain was gone. “Do not leave this room without telling me first. Do you understand? It is vital that I know where you’re going. All right?”
I nodded. I didn’t understand why she was suddenly so insistent about it.
I’d worked at this hotel for three years, and after the first week or so, I’d been given plenty of freedom to complete my work without supervision.
But if Kathy had decided this was important, I wasn’t going to argue with her.
A moment later, she was cursing and dashing off across the room. “Roshtan, where are you going with that? No, we don’t need to throw it away. Just put it in the fridge and we can re-use it later. The guests are still going to be hungry after all this is cleaned up…”
I watched her go, then sighed, wishing that a cold tray of breakfast food was the worst of the problems I had to deal with right now.
There was a hollow feeling in my chest, and I wondered whether dimari could get physically sick from losing a master.
My trainers had always treated it like it would be the end of the world.
I had the vague idea that I should be working…
but now that my master was dead, what work was there to do?
Perhaps the hollowness was more confusion than anything else…
“Xel. My sweet treasure,” a saccharine voice said from beside me, and I looked up to see Dorral peering down at me.
“You must be distraught with poor Jacob’s passing.
” The look on his face was a brazen attempt at sincerity, which nonetheless spectacularly failed to measure up.
He sat down beside me and put a hand on my knee.
“But I’ve got just the solution. Why don’t you come upstairs with me, and we can figure out what we’re going to do next.
I’m sure there are plenty of options that would suit you very well.
I know some people who would love to make use of your unique…
skill set.” He slid his hand higher up my thigh as he said it, and gave it a firm squeeze.
“So come on.” He stood up, offering me his hand.
“Let’s go up to my suite and get you sorted out. ”
My first impulse was to obey Dorral. I’d gone plenty of places with him before. He was the general manager of the hotel. He’d asked me to perform services for him almost every day for the past three years; in his office, in his suite, in the storage rooms.
But Kathy had been so emphatic about telling her before I went anywhere.
I still wasn’t sure why she was being so insistent about it.
But she was still my supervisor – or as near as mattered, at least, until any new arrangements were made – so I would have to find her and tell her where I was going.
But then it occurred to me that I didn’t actually want to go with Dorral, and the realisation startled me. It had been a long time since I’d thought in terms of wanting anything.
“I gave you an order, Xel,” Dorral said, his tone sharpening when I didn’t move. “Come upstairs.”
Dorral had never harmed me. But he was rude and demanding and always quick to remind me that he was more important than me. And I’d obeyed him, for as long as my master had expected me to. But now my master was dead. “You are not my master,” I said to Dorral. “I don’t have to follow your orders.”
“I’m currently the closest thing to a master you’ve got,” he snapped.
That made absolutely no sense. Masters were not interchangeable. A dimari was capable of bonding with exactly one master in their lifetime, and I had not bonded with Dorral.
“You are not my master,” I repeated.
Dorral stepped closer to me, towering over me as I stayed seated on the padded dining chair. Then he leaned down, so that his face was right in front of mine.
“Do you know how many times you’ve bent over for me to fuck you?” he asked me, his voice soft, his eyes glittering with anger.
It seemed an odd question, given our previous line of conversation, but I did a quick calculation in my head. “In the region of a thousand,” I answered him. He seemed surprised by the response. “More or less once a day for a little under three years. That’s roughly a thousand.”
Dorral blinked. Then scowled. “You’re a whore, Xel. Just a hole for other people to use. Nothing more. So are you coming upstairs with me? Or are you going to stay down here so that more people can use you?”
His argument made no sense. My master was dead, and therefore, he could no longer give me orders. So there was no imperative for me to have sex with anyone in this room. “I’m staying here,” I said, not caring how he reacted.
“Sir? Is there something you need?” a voice asked, and I glanced up to see that Captain Moss was back, his expression stern but calm as he regarded the way Dorral was standing over me.
“Just checking on Xel here,” Dorral said, attempting to sound amiable. “Poor lad must be feeling a bit lost, all things considered.”
“The authorities will be taking care of him,” Moss said. “There are procedures in place for the care of the dependants of a deceased party.”
Dorral’s scowl deepened. But he nodded and then plastered on a smile. “Good to know he’s going to be looked after. Please let me know if you need anything else.” With that, he turned on his heel and stalked away.
I frowned after him, finding his behaviour entirely baffling.
He wanted to have sex with me, but then complained when I complied?
And how was my value as a dimari affected in any way by how many people I’d had sex with?
Or how many times? I’d been sold as an erotic companion.
Sex was literally what I’d been trained for.
So why was Dorral angry that I’d fulfilled my master’s orders to have sex with him?
Well, whatever the issue was, it wasn’t currently my problem.
But what was still very much my problem was the issue of where I was going to live and what I was going to do now that my master was dead.
Rendol 4 still had vast terraforming programs going on, with only about forty per cent of the planet’s land mass having been terraformed into habitable territory.
Was I going to be sent to one of those projects?
Or would I just have to keep working in the hotel for the rest of my life, with no purpose greater than the next round of clean laundry?
In comparison, terraforming was probably preferable.
At least there, I would have the knowledge that the end result of my labour was a better planet for everyone else.
The morning drifted on, with my master’s body finally taken away by the paramedics, and then most of the police left, leaving the hotel staff to do a frantic clean up in anticipation of the next meal.
It was nearing lunchtime now, so perhaps they would abandon any further attempts to serve breakfast and simply skip over to lunch?
The guests would likely need a small discount or a voucher to make up for the inconvenience, but that wasn’t something I ever got involved in.
The reception staff would sort that out, and I was only likely to hear of the result through locker-room gossip.
A sudden commotion over by the door got my attention, and I looked up to see a tall man in a military uniform standing stiffly by the door, while one of the security guards attempted to keep him out.
“No guests are permitted into the dining room until further notice,” he said sternly, and the fact that he was a Denzogal tended to get people’s attention.
Denzogals were big – this guard was about eight feet tall – and covered from head to toe in thick, brown fur.
But the human in the military uniform was not the slightest bit intimidated.
“Commander Aiden Hill,” he said loudly, as if to make a point.
He showed the guard his credentials, by way of a holographic projection from the comm strapped to his arm.
I was familiar with comms, since most of the staff wore one, though no one had ever given me one.
They were used for all sorts of helpful tasks, from making lists, to making phone calls, to scanning the countertops and carpets in the hotel rooms to ensure there were no erroneous bodily fluids left over after a thorough cleaning.
“I’m here on behalf of the Alliance Parliament,” the military man went on.
“I’ve been informed that there’s been a breach of the Anti-Slavery Act, section thirty-two, clause nine.
” He pulled up another document on his comm, letting the security guard read it.
They were too far away for me to see anything on the document – not that I would have been able to read it anyway.
I’d been taught to read several different scripts during my education, but Alliance Common was not one of them.
After a minute or two, the security guard nodded and stepped aside. “Very good, sir,” he said deferentially. “Please go ahead. If you need anything else, please let me know.”
“Actually, I was advised to speak to Kathleen Norris,” the man said. “Could you point her out for me?”
I glanced around, finding that Kathy was nowhere to be seen.
The guard activated his comm and spoke into it briefly, no doubt sending a message to Kathy to come back to the dining room.
Almost immediately, Kathy came bustling into the room from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishcloth.
“I’ve got nine different crises to try and fix, Markus, so could you please explain why you’ve…
Oh!” She pulled herself up short when she saw the military uniform the man was wearing – along with the severe expression on his face. “Oh. What’s going on?”
“Kathleen Norris?” the man asked, but when he stepped forward, I saw he wasn’t alone.
Another man, also human, and also in military fatigues, was just behind him.
“I’m Commander Aiden Hill. I’m the official Dimari Protection Officer for Rendol 4, and I’ve been advised that there’s an unregistered dimari working at this property.
I was told to speak to you when I arrived. ”
“Well, I don’t own him,” she blurted out. “And I didn’t know he was unregistered! Who told you he was here? I had every intention of finding him a safe place-”
“Ma’am? Ma’am!” Aiden interrupted her. “You’re not in any trouble.
And no one is accusing you of anything. We simply need to speak to him.
The message I received said that his master died this morning, and I…
” He stopped, as his eyes landed on me, still sitting quietly on my chair at the side of the room.
At once, his tense stance softened. “Xel?” he asked, and I nodded.
I stood up and shuffled over to him. Kathy didn’t seem to like this man, and Kathy was currently the most trustworthy person in my life.
When I glanced at her, her lips were pursed in that familiar display of dissatisfaction.
“Xel, we’d like to talk to you about your master,” Aiden said, making an obvious effort to be gentle. “Are you aware of what happened this morning?”
“He knows his master died,” Kathy answered for me. “I keep waiting for some sort of mental collapse, but so far, he hasn’t had one.”
Aiden nodded thoughtfully. “Is there somewhere private we can talk to him?” he asked… right as a vacuum cleaner started up in the dining room. Some last minute cleaning before they let the guests back in.
Kathy scowled at the room over her shoulder, but then she shook her head.
“There’s no way in hell I’m letting you corner him in a room with no protection and no defences.
I’ve spent the past three years trying to protect him from whatever hellish whims his so-called master has had, and I’ll not be-”
“Then, by all means, please come with us,” Aiden interrupted her.
Perhaps it was because he genuinely didn’t mind her tagging along.
Perhaps it was just to get her to be quiet.
Either way, if she was coming, then it bypassed any of her previous instructions to not leave the room without her agreement.
The suggestion stopped Kathy’s tirade dead in its tracks. “Oh,” she said, making a hasty attempt to compose herself. “Well, there’s a meeting room behind the reception area. Would that do?”
“That’ll do nicely,” Aiden said, seeming entirely unruffled by her sudden about-face. “Please, lead the way.”