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Entry tags:	all that time silent still

AI Fic: All That Time, Silent Still (7/29)
TITLE: All That Time, Silent Still
AUTHOR: Mari
RATING: NC-17
PAIRINGS: Mavid, Tiedam, miscellaneous hints of others both slash and het.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own this sandbox, and all of the sandbox games played within are entirely fictional.
SUMMARY: Civilizations have crashed before under the impact of one great catastrophe. Make it two, and what’s left behind is barely recognizable. Slavefic AU.
CONTAINS: Coercive themes by definition; sex, violence, language, and torture both onscreen and off. Contact me if you want or need to know more.

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six



Part Seven

It was full dark by the time that Mayer arrived with the others; even if not for the lights scattered down the road leading to the house, David would have been able to hear that many vehicles arriving from all the way back out in the barn, in the fields beyond that. He stood in the sitting room while Carly went to the door and opened it even before Jason could take the reins of the first vehicle, her face so blank and proper that David would not have believed it if he had not seen her do it many times before. Her skirt was a russet-colored pool around her feet as she curtsied until she was nearly in a full kneel, and gave the impression that she could hold the pose for the entire night if that was what was required of her, just another lovely piece of furniture. David touched her lightly on the back of the neck as he went to greet the guests, and she straightened again just as fluidly.

“We’ll want drinks,” he told her. David could not make his face as china-doll blank and pleasing as a slave’s, but he could fill it with all sorts of emotions that he came nowhere near to feeling. He smiled as he reached forward to take the hand of Lord John Mayer, a tall and dark-haired man whose eyes had a way of pinning David and making him think that all of his secrets were already catalogued and simply awaiting the moment at which it would be most advantageous to strike, then the hand of his wife. Lady Jennifer Mayer was a slender, dark blonde who had worn a slightly pinched look every time that David had seen her, and her hand was cool as she gripped back at David’s own. David was not certain that he would not be wearing the same looking if he were forced to live and share a bed with Mayer; he looked like the sort of man who took his work home, and there were rumors that he plucked low-hanging fruit regardless of the person to whom it already belonged. With the Mayers was Jennifer’s sister through her father’s second marriage, Renee, who wore the such a similar look of constant and scarcely-hidden anxiety that David hesitated to lay the full blame for the wife’s condition at the husband’s feet. Renee’s own husband, Harry, was a quiet man who had deferred to his wife by laid-back default every time that David had seen them together. The Lord Connick had brought money and land to the table in their marriage in exchange for Renee’s talent at business and favor; what the Lady Mayer had brought to her marriage with her Lord Mayer, David could not say. There was a chance that it might even have been love, and if that was the case then it was one of the saddest things that David had ever learned of another human being.

Mayer’s smile was easy as he released David’s hand and allowed his wife to slip her arm back through his. Even though he had been in David’s residence many times before, he always took his time looking about the sitting lounge, noting the decoration, all of it antique and very little of it managing to look that way. When it had become clear that there were going to be very few new things, people had begun taking very good care of the old. David had a mind that some grandmother or grandfather in his past had done so even before things had begun to go bad, out of care. “I was starting to think that I would never see the day when you became interested in government,” Mayer said.

David smiled back, waved his hand in the direction of the red silk couch, the chairs that sat opposite it. “Please, make yourselves comfortable,” he said before he decided to answer. He took a seat on the couch while Lady Renee settled herself down immediately beside him, and Mayer in a chair opposite that still managed to linger very close. Lady Jennifer took a place next to David on the opposite side as her sister, while Connick was in another of the chairs. David noticed that, while both sisters were perched on the edges of their seats rather than relaxing back, Lady Jennifer’s was as if she might bolt at any moment, and Lady Renee’s as if she could not wait to hear David say more. She was popular in the government in the same way that Mayer was, though not, so far as David knew, in the same occupation.

“I can’t stay out here forever,” David said finally. His lips moved into a smile. He gestured about the room and watched their eyes all follow. It was comfortable. He had seen much more lavish places, especially for the number of slaves that he had here to work it. “I have no needs that aren’t met, but...how long can you store potatoes in your root cellar before you realize that might have a few things that you want, too?” David shrugged. “And I’m the only one of my family left--” Across the rug, Connick stirred, so slightly that David would not have been aware of it if he had not put himself into the habit of noticing everything, and then went still again as if there was nothing troubling about what David had said at all. People died all of the time; it was a hard old world. “I need to start thinking of marriage and heirs. Right now I can offer a woman comfort--”

“They do enjoy that,” Mayer murmured, smiling at his wife with what looked to be a genuine fondness. Jennifer inclined her head very slightly and lifted her lips into an answering smile, a touch of the overbred tension leaving her.

“But I can’t offer her wealth,” David finished, lifting his eyebrow slightly.

“And they enjoy that more,” Mayer switched tactics without a hitch in stride, inclining his head very slightly towards Renee, who stiffened and narrowed her eyes. Her husband watched her for cues, but did not come to her aid. As Jennifer herself had not had much more to her name when she had agreed to be Mayer’s wife, David did not expect him to pursue the matter further, and continued after a sufficient lull had gone by in the conversation.

“This place is worth more than sentimental value,” David said, waving his hand about at the room again. “It’s about time that it started to produce more than it consumes. The woods beyond the pasture are growing thick enough for harvesting wood, and I can use the cleared land to till a bigger surplus over the next few years.”

Mayer was watching David with a barely veiled amusement. “You brought me all the way out here because you want to offer your services to the government as a farmer?” he asked.

David was aware that what he was really doing was barely more than baring his teeth. At the moment, however, he did not care. “I’m offering them wood, horses, and food,” he said, “to trade with Eastland or store for our own war efforts against the Resistance as they like--it might be wise to do so sooner rather than later.” When Mayer’s eyebrows went up, David went on, “You don’t believe any more than I do that Resistance raiders have been going out to the farms solely because they’re hungry. They know that the breadbasket is our vulnerable point as much as theirs.”

“And here I had you pegged as a bumpkin,” Renee finally spoke, sounding surprised as well as a touch admiring. David schooled his face even more carefully than normal when he turned towards her; her job was not Mayer’s because it was in many ways even more dangerous to him. “Imagine that, you are paying attention all the way out here.”

“I can get the wireless reports just as well as you can,” David answered. He allowed a slight testiness to enter his voice, just enough to make it sound real. How many poor free and aristocracy were dead because Renee Connick knew how to watch an entire room while she did not appear to be doing anything more complicated than enjoying a glass of wine? David had no way to say; the messes were generally cleaned up well afterwards. “And I have much more of a vested interest in seeing the Resistance dealt with than you do. How many slaves do you think that I have on this property, and how many guns?”

“You’ll want to deal with that woman one, if it takes her that long to make a tray of drinks,” Mayer said, glancing at his watch. David’s lips thinned, but he heard the door opening behind him and turned. It was all that he could do not to shoo Archuleta right back out again under whatever pretext that he could think of, and never mind that he would be leaving behind Mayer, who knew slaves, and Renee, who knew how to watch everything.

“My apologies, Master,” Archuleta said to the tray as he bent so that each person could take their glass, wine for the women and scotch for the men. “Carly is struggling with the entree, she asked me to bring these out for her.”

“I’ll deal with Carly and her lack of prioritization later,” David said as he held his glass to his lips. He thought that he saw Archuleta’s eyes flick up to his for a second, seeking clarification, and could have kicked the boy for being so open when Renee could see his entire face and Mayer was still in a position to at least catch his profile. Archuleta was wearing slacks and a thick sweater even though there was a fire in the room and the house would be kept at a comfortable temperature for several more hours yet. David wondered if part of the delay had not been that Archuleta had run to change immediately after Carly had requested his aid, after he had learned who it was that he was going to be serving.

Mayer caught Archuleta’s wrist as Archuleta bent to offer him his glass, and Archuleta went still immediately. Mayer’s grip was, for now, above the wool of the sweater, not touching the skin. “What is this?” Mayer asked, turning Archuleta’s wrist so that David could also see the sweater, as if it had not been obvious that the kid was clothed from the very second that he had entered the room. “Isn’t this your body slave, David?”

David didn’t dare hit Mayer’s hand away, not right now, however much he might want to. “Do you really think,” he snapped, “that I have the resources to keep a slave who doesn’t do anything other than keep the bed warm for me? He’s been outside.” There were points of color on each of Archuleta’s cheeks. David guessed that they could be mistaken for cold.

Mayer made a snorting sound and still did not release Archuleta’s wrist. Jennifer was looking at him very hard. “Then you need to trade him in,” Mayer said. “And get one that makes you never want to leave the bedroom, so you don’t mind leaving them in it. The Pitts have a man--” Jennifer went very still at their mention, and looked straight ahead into the fireplace while she took a sip of her wine. David could feel Renee leaning around behind him so that she could study her sister more closely and make certain that she was all right.

What the Pitts have is a boy, David thought as he remembered the dark-haired and dark-eyed kid who had been trailing them both like a half-forgotten pet the previous day. If David was being incredibly generous, maybe he would have guessed that the slave had been seventeen.

“I helped train him,” Mayer went on, the first mention that he had made all night of the business that kept him so thoroughly within the government’s good graces. Mayer’s slaves almost never rebelled, no matter how remote the estate upon which they lived was, or how good their chances were of being able to overpower their masters and get to the Resistance if they could get the collar off. “It was such a shame to let him go, but.” Mayer lifted his shoulders into a shrug. “Such is the nature of contract work, and I was well-compensated.”

“That boy was given to the Pitts as a gift,” Jennifer broke in. Nearly half of her wine was gone, and there was a touch more color coming into her face.

Mayer paused so that he could look at her for a moment. “I was still compensated for my work,” he said. “What wiser heads decided to do with him after that was not my business.” Jennifer shifted about and then finished the rest of her wine, her lips pursing slightly around the dregs.

“Bring the lady another glass,” David ordered Archuleta, which in turn ordered Mayer to release him so that he could obey. “Would you like something other than red wine, Jennifer? You don’t look as though you enjoy it.”

“Red is fine,” Jennifer said. She swirled her glass idly for a second before she handed it back for Archuleta to place upon his tray. “We’re having beef, aren’t we? I’d rather have something full-bodied even if it’s bitter.”

The door opened again, this time admitting Carly. She dipped once again into the kind of deep and perfect curtsy that David swore she had to be practicing in her spare time, in order for her to continue doing to so gracefully when she was not called upon to perform it often.

“The meal is ready, Master,” Carly told David while she held her curtsy.

David rose along with the others and told Archuleta, “Bring the wine to the table.” To Carly, “I’ll speak to you later about pushing your own reason for eating onto a boy that I had already given other assignments.” Carly was good, and David saw her face paling even though she already had the kind of skin that hated direct sunlight. She put her hand in the small of Archuleta’s back and all but shoved him through the doorway before his face could let it be known that David had given him very little to do that day, actually, other than be under Carly’s feet.

The same dining room table at which David had spoken to Michael earlier that day was an enormous cedar piece that took up the larger portion of the room, more than once making David think that it was going to catch fire with a careless spark thrown from the fireplace. It had been in this room since before David could remember, since he had been small enough to run beneath the legs without ducking, and he could not imagine moving it elsewhere and putting something more practical in its place. Especially when the furniture in the house still had such a power to impress, David noted when he Renee, the only member of the party who had never before set foot in his house, pause and take it in. The woods beyond the fields and horse pastures were finally dense enough to start harvesting, David had not been lying about that; it had still been generations since there were trees large enough for this.

“Please,” David said, waving his hand at them to take their seats as he did the same. He had been in homes before where slaves pulled out the chairs for the masters to sit, but he preferred for Mayer to remain guessing as to how many people actually lived here for so long as he could. Carly began entering with plates and bowls a bare handful of seconds later, Archuleta behind her with the fresh wine. When the light vegetable soup had been set in front of each of them and Carly and Archuleta retired for the moment, David returned to the conversation that they had been having in the sitting room as if they had never left it. “My parents, they--” Were good people. “They had some troubling ideas.”

Mayer paused in sampling his soup long enough to lean back, fold his hands beneath his chin, and look at David hard. “That’s a rather mild term for it,” he said in a voice that was so smooth, so dangerous, you didn’t know how deeply into the water you had gone until the riptide pulled you under. “What they were were borderline traitors.” Mayer’s eyes moved towards Renee, she who saw all and then hoarded the secrets to herself until she close to give them away again.

David didn’t realize how tightly he had come to grip his soup spoon until he heard a clinking noise; he had struck it against the china nearly loudly enough to chip it. The way that his lips moved didn’t feel like a smile, but no one at the table hopped up and ran screaming from the room. “And my brother was worse than borderline?” he asked, voice tight, knuckles aching. “That’s what you’re trying to say?” He watched Mayer’s face carefully, looking for a sign of recognition there. If Andrew had ever--if Michael was not the first that he had seen, then he would not be able to hide it, David was sure. Mayer was too proud of his own work.

No, David decided as he leaned back into his seat and forced himself to take up the spoonful of soup that had been growing cold while he had been holding it suspended in the air. He could have been tasting gritty water for all that he knew.

“It’s a matter of public record,” Mayer said. He didn’t pause or look away from David’s face, and David guessed that he ought to feel perversely grateful that at least Mayer was not trying to pretend to give a shit. “I’m not pulling any dirty family secrets out of you when they weren’t secret to begin with.”

“I know,” David gritted, and then said again, “I know.” He managed to sound more normal this time. When he took up a second spoonful of the soup, the others all stopped staring at him and began eating again themselves. He had six months shy of eighteen when Andrew had run away, and goddamned lucky that he had been the eldest son and it could not be said that his brother had tainted him, only implied that he ought to have seen the way that he was going and reined him back.

Clearing his throat a few moments later, David leaned back as Carly floated in like a ghost and took the bowls, Archuleta following her with the wine. He topped all of the glasses save for David’s without asking; David had hardly done more than touch his lips to the rim of the glass since the last time that the boy had come through. Mayer’s was nearly empty, and he lifted it up again as soon as Archuleta had backed away.

“When I marry,” David said to Mayer as Carly and Archuleta soon returned with the meal, steaks and potatoes and asparagus tips that had been braised in butter. The potatoes and asparagus had been grown on the land itself; the steaks were from Lady Underwood’s estate ten miles away. “I want to know that I’m not going to be bringing any heirs into...into a government who is uncertain as to their loyalties.” The way that they had been with him, and for a very long time--David wasn’t sure that they weren’t still suspicious of him. “So let me know what I can provide the House of Governance in the way of wood, horses, and food--” Let him know how much they were going to be needing of each over the course of the next year. “And I’ll make certain one way or another that I can provide it.”

“For a cost,” Mayer said slowly.

“For the sake of not having the Resistance sitting on top of my own land and the army conveniently occupied elsewhere,” David cut in smoothly. “That’s the price of my patriotism.”

“You’re being awfully bold, letting us know that it has a price, after all,” Renee said slowly. When she was thinking hard, she lost her slight squint and began to blink slowly, like a cat. David glanced at her.

“Prudent,” he answered. “I’m putting myself into your hands.”

“Mmm,” Mayer hummed, which was not an answer at all. David felt the fine hairs on the back of his neck starting to prickle before Mayer abruptly went on, “You picked up a new slave a few days ago. Don’t tell me that you’re going to keep him hidden away all night?”

“He works in the stable,” David answered with a careless wave. “He’s hardly suitable for dinner table company.” Still, Mayer had a glittering look that David had seen him where before, and it had always meant that he was not going to be going anywhere until he had gotten what he wanted. David coughed into his hand and, when Archuleta came up to him so quickly and quietly that David was starting to get the niggling sense that the kid was telepathic, and if that was the case then he had only thought that he was fucked and re-fucked if it turned out that he had been wrong in his assessment, quietly told him to have Michael come to the dining room. Archuleta was gone again with scarcely a whisper across the rugs to mark where he had been. David watched him go and said to Mayer, “Did you teach him to do that?” He thought that he heard his voice hitch, but he could have been wrong. Renee did not react, at any rate.

Mayer took another swallow of wine and put his hand over his wife’s briefly before he began to cut into his beef. Pleased color rose into her cheeks at the display of affection. “I taught him everything that a body slave needs to know,” Mayer said. “Briefly. I saw him only briefly, though.”

If it turned out that there actually was a deity in the heavens, then David guessed that he ought to be thanking Him or Her for small favors. He poked at his own meal for the scattered handful of moments that it took Michael to come to the dining room, much shorter than it had taken Archuleta to return with the drinks earlier. As soon as he stepped into the room and caught sight of Mayer, David knew that it was only because he had not known who the guests were. Had he, David had a more than passing suspicion that he would have gone out to the barn to see what was the matter and found himself missing both a horse and a slave, or even just a slave alone if Michael was really desperate and decided to go on foot. There was a look in his eye as he stood in the doorway that made David think, for a second, that he was really going to turn and try it. Then the mask fell down, and was gone again, gliding with the smoothness and grace of someone who had been trained as a body slave as he came across the room to David. David saw that, blankly controlled or not, Michael still tried to skirt out of Mayer’s reach as he walked behind his chair.

Mayer saw it, too. He was well on his buzzed and, with a little luck, drunk after that, but he had reflexes that were not to be underestimated. David thought that he was going to grab Michael by the wrist, still couldn’t bring himself to be entirely surprised when Mayer’s fingers found their way through the loops of Michael’s belt instead. Michael went to Mayer willingly in body alone; David didn’t have to remember Kristy Lee’s tutelage of years ago in order to be able to reach what the set of those shoulders were saying.

“I thought so,” Mayer said, looking Michael up and down. “He’s an ID number I won’t soon forget.”

“So you’re aware of his record?” David asked. He continued to push the food about idly on this plate, even though his appetite had fled for parts unknown as soon as Mayer and Michael had laid eyes on one another.

“Of course I am,” Mayer said, continuing to look up at Michael. He threw a hard, sharp glance David’s way that contained an unmistakable threat in it, and David was under no illusions that it was directed at him. “You haven’t been having...issues?” If Michael drew up any tighter, he was not going to be able to move.

“No,” David answered immediately. “But the scars, the price, you know.” He smiled at Mayer, who knew more about slaves than virtually anyone that David knew, and closed his fingers slowly about the stem of his wineglass. “It made me wonder.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Mayer answered easily. He tightened his grip upon Michael even more fully and was on the verge of pulling him into his lap. Next to him, Jennifer was cutting her asparagus into dainty, ladylike bites without looking anyone. “The ones that take longer to break wind up breaking harder than anyone else, in the end. He’s quality.”

The stress that Mayer put upon the final word nearly had David breaking his wineglass against the edge of the table then and there. “He’s also not a body slave,” he said dryly, unmistakably adding unspoken in the pause, Nor is he yours. Mayer took much longer to untangle his fingers from Michael’s belt loops than he had to slide them in, and he was wearing a faint smirk as Michael immediately crossed over to David without being ordered to do so and slid into a perfect kneeling posture of obeisance beside him, wrists crossed lightly in the small of his back, eyes directed at the floor.

I didn’t want you to do that, David thought with a faint kind of horror, never mind that Michael could not have possibly thought that he was being brought into the room for any other reason than to be shown off once he had seen that there was company there, never mind that David could not possibly tell him to rise and send him off again while the trustworthiness of everyone else in the room, still possibly Michael included, was so very much in doubt. He grit his teeth together hard instead, and took a gulp of his wine now that he was no longer in danger of killing Mayer right there in front of his wife, sister-in-law, and friend.

“He’s been trained in a variety of disciplines,” Mayer said. He was two glasses ahead of David already, and he still accepted more when Archuleta ghosted in to refill them all again. The appreciative look that he cast over the kid was the same as that which he cast over Michael, and David didn’t think that it was an accident that Michael had settled down on the side of David’s chair furthest from Mayer.

Oh, I’m a fucking piss-poor protector if that’s the case, David thought, while Mayer added, “Your steak is going to get cold.”

And wasting fresh meat might as well have put a neon sign over his head. David smiled and began to eat again, saying to Renee as he did so, “You have contacts in the government. How friendly do you think that they would be towards an arrangement?”

She had barely touched her wine, giving David good reason to follow her example. Renee folded her hands together beneath her chin as she leaned forward to scrutinize him. “Very,” she said after a long pause. “Especially if you can provide winter crops, as well.”

David gestured towards the windows, which were covered in heavy curtains to insulate against the night chill, to the fields that were hidden beyond that. “Funny thing about raising horses,” he said. “You never lack for being able to fertilize a good wheat crop.”

Renee choked slightly and then put her hand against her mouth, though David knew that before her marriage she had lived on a working estate very similar to his own. Make your peace with dealing in death, he thought, startling himself when the strongest thing that he could bring himself to feel was annoyance, you kind of lose the right to complain about shit.

Michael beside him was kneeling as if he was either already in pain or expecting to be at any second. David put his hand down, idly, against the back of Michael’s neck without thinking, felt him tense even further until he was at the point of flinching. David wanted to jerk his hand away immediately, but forced himself to let it linger for a few seconds before he put it back around the stem of his wineglass. “Can you give me numbers?” he asked Renee. When she showed signs of falling back into those slow and dangerous blinks, David was quick to add, “I don’t want to aid in the war effort to the point that I’m not keeping my own estate fed.”

Still blinking, and now tilting her head to own side so that she could scrutinize him. David had seen Renee watch people far more surreptitiously than this. He hoped that that was a good sign, that she was so willing to get her interest in him right out there in the open. “I’ll have someone contact you,” Renee said finally. “That’s not information that lay people run about with at their disposal.” A dimpling smile. David smiled back easily, automatically.

“The beef is very fresh,” Harry said from the far end of the table, almost startling David as he focused his attention onto him. The man was not known for speaking when it was not necessary, preferring instead to let Renee run the building of their private empire while he provided the capital.

“It’s from Lady Underwood,” David answered, after a beat. “She slaughters on-site. I sold her a driving pair a few months ago and I’m still reaping the benefits.”

“Lady Underwood.” Mayer sounded amused as he lifted his wine glass to his lips. Michael lifted his head quickly, shielded from Mayer’s sight by David’s body, before he lowered it again. David still saw his expression becoming deliberately focused and intent before he was able to mask it again. If Michael was troubled by the sound of Mayer becoming amused by anything, then so far as David was concerned he would be an idiot not to follow that lead. He put his hand against the back of Michael’s neck again and for a few seconds even thought that Michael might flinch him off. “Call in the rest of your order now, David, and don’t expect any more from her in the future.”

David felt cold, and it was not until Michael shifted that he realized he had begun to restlessly flex his fingers against the back of Michael’s neck. He forced his grip to loosen, but could not bring himself to entirely pull his had away. “Is that so.” David coughed and tried again, hoping that his voice would sound more natural this time. “She’s annoyed someone it’s best to be on the good side of?”

Mayer laughed. David ran his fingers lightly through the hair at the nape of Michael’s neck, hoping to soothe him even after he had known within seconds that Michael was not going to be soothed until he was far away from David’s side again. Maybe he was trying to calm himself, then.

“We’ve all done that, and we’re all still sitting at this table,” Mayer said. The wine was putting twin points of color high up on his cheeks. Beside him, Jennifer made a fretful noise. “No, Underwood’s done a little more than that.” Mayer’s face twisted. “She’s been selling beef to the Resistance.”

David didn’t realize that his fingers had tightened upon Michael’s neck, or how hard, until he heard Michael hiss an inhale from between his teeth. Nor did he think that Michael was particularly interested in David’s stroking apology. “They have money?” he asked. “I was under the impression that they were starving out by degrees.”

Renee fidgeted first with the stem of her wineglass, then with the last remains of her roll, her hands not managing to remain still on any one object for more than a few seconds at a time, as she glared at Mayer. “She’s been giving it away,” she ultimately gritted out. A secret being pried from her hands before she could decide to release herself and to her own best advantage, David thought that it was a good thing for Mayer’s sleep that night that they were not going to be riding back to the same estate. “Does it matter, though? It’s treason whether she makes a profit or not. Though the fact that she’s doing it out of ideology rather than self-interest makes it worse, so far as I’m concerned.”

Michael’s head remained down, his wrists clasped behind him, his body one perfect, flawless line. David could not help but glance down at him and feel his mouth twist, just a little. He was struggling to keep his emotions to himself and he merely believed; how could someone who had actually lived it resist the urge to leap up and run about the room? “Will there be a trial?” he asked, and thought that he felt Michael shift underneath his hand.

Shocking nearly everyone at the table save for perhaps Renee, it was Connick who spoke, hands folded underneath his chin and staring deeply into the contents of his glass. He had waved Archuleta off nearly every time that the boy had come into the room; he ate and drank both with a deliberate slowness, weighing what he was doing, and brought the same mood to his words.

“No, there won’t be any trial for her,” he said, surprising David again with the slow-burning anger that glided beneath his words and made him wonder if perhaps he and Renee were not a more equal partnership than most assumed. “How could there be? With all of her land, with all of her slaves, with everything that the House has done for her--” Underwood’s family was older than the Cooks, and had never that David was aware of had even a far-off and secondhand shadow of suspicion cast over them. “Knowing that she even thought differently, even if she was caught, would be...highly unwise.” Harry lifted his gaze from the moody study of his glass. “All that the lower classes need is a spark, David, you saw that with the way that they went after your boy yesterday.” He tipped his head towards Renee, acknowledging her as a matter of course for the information, even though she had been nowhere near the scene that David had been able to see.

A quiet accident, then. David’s fingers had stilled on the nape of Michael’s neck as he thought. Underwood had several of David’s own horses and was an avid rider. It would hardly be looked upon with suspicion if she was alone and one of them happened to spook, if she was found with a broken neck. Fall harvesting was stirring up angry snakes who were trying to find hibernation places for the winter, it needn’t even be blamed on David’s horse. No one would know anything except for the House itself, and the people in this room.

Mayer broke the silence by saying, “I hope that you know what your being trusted with this information means, David.”

“That I’m being offered the government contract?” David answered back smoothly. Mayer’s smile let him know that he had won, that he had safely crossed the minefield with all of his priorities and secrets intact. Beside him, even though his legs had to be aching by now, Michael’s spine remained smooth and unbowed, and he did not lean up against David’s chair for support.

David steered the conversation towards inconsequential topics throughout desert and coffee, not allowing himself to turn back towards the topic of Underwood even though he desperately wanted to. They weren’t friends, precisely, but they had known each other since childhood and did a great deal of trading back and forth across the estates in order to obtain what each needed without the necessity of traveling into the city. She had never given him even a hint that she might be in a position similar to his own. David didn’t guess she could have, not with all of the effort that he had put into making certain that he didn’t betray himself to her, either. And she was going to die for doing the right thing. David could hardly keep himself still to his chair.

He considered it a blessing when he was finally able to call the evening to a close and walk his guests to the front door, make idle chat about gossip and gossip-mongers as he waited with them for their carriages to be brought back around. When he was watching the sleek shadows disappearing down the drive again, illuminated only sporadically by the lights set out at interval, David finally shut the door and leaned his forehead heavily against the wood before he drew the bolt.

He had given Michael no instruction before he had risen to accompany the other four out, but David still drew himself up when he reentered the dining room and discovered that Michael kneeling beside the chair where David had left him. “You’re still here?” David asked, more roughly than he had intended. “I thought that you would have taken the first opportunity to run.”

Michael looked up. “You didn’t give me leave to go, Master,” he said evenly.

“David,” David correctly automatically, barely stopping himself from shivering. After the evening, he didn’t want anything at all that reminded him of a status that he hadn’t earned.

“David.” The way that Michael said his name, though, did nothing to imply that there was any difference. David swore and saw Michael become warier without moving an inch from his position, watching David though David didn’t know what Michael meant to do if David did become hostile. Michael was his. He could do anything whatsoever that he wanted to him, whether that ranged from fucking or killing.

Looking at Michael like that while Michael looked back at him was more than David could take, suddenly. He swore again and strode forward so that he could take Michael beneath the arm, not missing the way that Michael went rigid in expectation of a blow. “I’m not--” David was loving these new minefields that he had to find as he muddled along, that even I’m not going to beat the hell out of you for no other reason that I’ve had a bad night had to be spelled out. “I’m not going to hurt you. Get up.” Michael was a little slow in rising, making David wonder how much of it was simple stiffness from forcing himself to remain so still for so long, and how much of it was the old injuries that David had seen when he had purchased him. He nudged Michael towards his own chair and, when Michael reluctantly took a seat, also put his own, forgotten wineglass into Michael’s hand. “And drink that. You’re too pale.”

There were tremors across the surface of the wine as Michael slowly lifted it to his mouth and took a sip, and then another when that earned him no punishment. “Ma--David,” Michael said after a moment. He looked as if he was building himself up to something. “So are you.”

David let out a short laugh and put his hand over his eyes. “Probably,” he admitted. “Yeah, okay. Definitely I am. You ever have to put all of your effort into playing nice with people when you would really rather smash the wine stem into their faces?” Michael paused, looked at David over the rim of the glass without speaking, and David’s words caught up to him less than a second later. He swore, he might have been able to navigate his way through the shark-infested waters that were dinner without springing a leak in his boat, but he had been drinking way too much that night to have any kind of meaningful conversation with a slave who still looked as if he thought that David might skewer him to the chair at any moment. “Of course you have. Finish your wine, I’ll scrounge around and see if I can find anything that’s actually stupider to say.”

Michael twirled the wineglass between his fingers in an eerie imitation of the way that Mayer had done during dinner before he said, very slowly and reminding David of a man extending his hand out to a feral dog, “I’ve heard stupider.”

David was tempted to pour another glass for himself, but his head already felt heavy and thick. “And we haven’t known each other long enough for any of them to be me, bonus.” Michael’s eyelashes fluttered for a moment as if he could have disagreed before he thought better of it. Once upon a time, you had a sense of humor, David thought, more warmed by the realization than he had expected. Worlds and wonders, there might even be whispers of a person still in there. He thought that there was a certain light in the dark eyes, shielded but not put out entirely, that had not been in evidence when David had first seen him the previous day.

That light disappeared as abruptly as if it had never been, and with it every trace of relaxation that Michael had managed to either scrounge up or fake since David had nearly shoved him into the chair, when David asked, “Was Lord Mayer the one who trained you to be a slave?”

Michael released the wineglass and pushed it away from himself, David rather thought so that he would not break the stem with the force of his grip. He laid his hands out flat against the table and said, “Some of my scars are his.”

“The one on your leg?” David asked, unable to stop himself even though every line of Michael’s body was nearly begging him to go back.

Michael looked up, held his gaze without turning it back towards the floor the way that a good slave ought. David didn’t think, but knew, that he was seeing a glimpse of the soldier that Michael had been before he had been captured, and he couldn’t imagine what Mayer must have done in order to put that different man in his place. “No, sir,” Michael said. David wanted to correct him, but didn’t. “That was from something else.”

“I’m sorry.” Michael blinked in more surprise than he would have if David had outright hit him. David stepped back from the table, against which he had been leaning his hip. “Enjoy the wine, Michael, and have a good night.” He left with Michael saying nothing, but feeling the man’s eyes following him all the way to the door.

End Part Seven

Continue to Part Eight