InsaneJournal

Current mood:	artistic
Entry tags:	all that time silent still

AI Fic: All That Time, Silent Still (9/29)
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
Part Eight



Part Nine

David rolled the body beneath his and pinned Michael’s hands down to the sheets before he kissed him, roughly enough that they were both going to have burns from the stubble. Michael squirmed up against him half-heartedly and snorted when David refused to let him up.

“Predictable,” he muttered, but he wasn’t truly trying to get away, and he was kissing David back every bit as fiercely as David was kissing him. David liked seeing him with his eyes sparkling. David liked it now that he knew they could.

“I’m becoming an old man,” David answered calmly. “Probably not going to develop any new vices at this point.” He felt Michael’s mouth quirking a smile against the side of his neck.

“I like your vices,” Michael confessed. He proved just how much he liked them by arching against David’s knee and gasping hard when David ran it up between his thighs, against his erection. David reached between his legs to grasp at him, and then woke up hard in sheets that were soaked in sweat despite the house’s chill and with a prick so hard that it was almost painful. He staggered into the shower, thanking his luck that this didn’t look like one of the mornings in which Carly was going to slide into his room for a pre-dawn chat, and turned his shower on as cold as it could possibly go. That was saying a lot; it felt as though needles were being driven into his chest, and his teeth were chattering nearly hard enough to drown out the sound of the water within seconds. It didn’t do a thing to wilt his erection or cool the steam running through his blood. David put his head against his forearm and jerked himself off, hard, gritting his teeth and barely managing to keep his knees from going unhinged as he came.

Hell of a subject to have a sex dream about, David told himself as he turned the water off and staggered out into his bedroom on shaky legs. Someone who can’t say no to you, so they sure as fuck can’t say yes. Not to mention someone who hated and feared him, and who at any rate didn’t look as though he had been the man with the light in his eyes for a very long time.

You were just getting yourself off. It was the only redeeming thing that he could think of as he drew clothes back across his shivering body. It was just his body responding to a pretty form, it didn’t mean anything, not unless he let it. And there were a lot bigger things to think about than his libido, right now.

David ate a quick breakfast that he barely tasted and then strode outside before his hair had even had a chance to dry completely, feeling the cold attack the remaining droplets on the nape of his neck and turn them into something that almost hurt. His breath steamed in the air in time to the breaths of the horses that he was watching in the pastures. A few figures were in the gardens, pulling the handful of asparagus and cabbage that was ready to come inside and be stored. The winter wheat had a ways to go, yet. They needed nearly nothing here, not even meat, and David was struggling hard to think of any believable reason for him or even for any of the people belonging to him, who might be trusted with the secret, to go to the dead drop. He could find none, not even if he were to purchase another slave, but he couldn’t--he couldn’t do nothing.

David was very aware that he didn’t have the first thing that resembled a plan and equally as aware that what he was doing constituted the very height of idiocy, but he still found himself storming into the barn with the intention of grabbing the first, the fastest horse that he saw and galloping all the way to Underwood’s estate. A pair of voices from inside one of the stalls was barely enough to slow him down, let alone check him, until he heard Kristy Lee call out, “Sir!” When David turned, it was to see that Kristy Lee was leaning over the door of one of the stalls; for a brief second, Michael joined her in the doorway before disappearing back into the interior.

“What is it?” David asked, reluctantly coming back down the aisle. In his mind’s eye, he could see Underwood going for a morning ride and not returning.

Kristy Lee lifted her eyebrow at David’s brusque tone, but apparently Carly was right about Michael not being a big talker, and he had not filled her in on the frank discussion that he and David had had the night before. David couldn’t see himself being all that much more open with Michael without outright laying forth everything that he was trying to do when he made those trips into civilization. If David and Kristy Lee could not talk like actual people in front of one another, then David guessed that his ass was already going to be handed to him by everything else that Michael knew.

“She’s throwing heat today,” Kristy Lee said in an aggrieved tone, stepping to the side so that David could see the same cantankerous mare who had nearly taken a chunk from him the morning before. She had her ears flattened against her head and was sulking in the back corner of her stall, steadfastly ignoring Michael as he knelt beside her and ran his hand up and down the foreleg that David could see even from here was swollen. She was only putting her weight on it gingerly, and she glared at Michael every time that his hand came near her hock or knee. Remembering how quickly Michael had moved the night before, David did not bother to call a warning.

“She looks like you,” David said as he leaned across the edge of the stall to get a closer look at the mare for himself. He was not as fast as Michael; Kristy Lee’s sock caught him squarely on the forearm. The mare shifted her weight irritably back and forth from one leg to the other, not looking as if she ever planned to pull her ears up from her head again, and even bared her teeth at Michael as if she meant to take a piece out of him for good measure. He drifted out of the way as lightly as a dancer.

David leaned against the top of the stall door, putting his weight upon his folded arms as he watched both the horse and Michael--mostly Michael. The stiffness that he had shown the night before, old injuries and David’s untrusted presence, was gone, he moved like a man who had once been used to grace. He must not realize how closely David was watching him, then. It was wrong, and it was terrible, and it was entirely possible that he was condemning himself to hell simply for what he was thinking, but David analyzed the grace and realized that it had not quite been there when had been dreaming about Michael before. Maybe it would be now, if he dreamed of Michael again.

David coughed, lowered his gaze as he felt two others come to settle on him. “Let me guess,” he says to his folded arms, “she has a pulled tendon?”

“That’s what it feels like.” Kristy Lee sounds testy. Good; that means that she did not recognize the rasp in David’s voice or the sudden dilation of his pupils. It had been a very long time since they had flashed those kinds of looks at one another, anyway.

“Have enough liniment for it?” David asked. This time Kristy Lee caught the wrong note in his voice, this time she looked up quickly with narrowed eyes to see what he’s up to, but she hadn’t put the pieces together quite yet.

“Barely,” she said. “Put in a call for more, but--” She lifted her shoulders into a shrug. No one put a priority on coming out this far, not with the Resistance growing more aggressive by the day even as they were supposedly growing weaker. David noticed that she glanced sideways at Michael as she said it, but his face was blank.

“Can we get a vet out here?” David asked.

He was carefully not looking at anyone, but that did not mean that he could not still feel Kristy Lee’s stare against the side of his face, sharp and shrewd like a butcher’s knife. “It’s a pulled tendon,” she started slowly, tilting her head to one side in the way that always looked just slightly like a threat.

“Yes.” Michael lifted his head from his scrutiny of the mare and looked at David, looked at him hard, in a way that was more plea than threat, no matter how much he used to be a soldier. He was no Kristy Lee; as close as he was to begging David, he was the one who almost turned David back. “But, hell, we need this horse--”

“Not until spring,” Kristy Lee insisted, her brow furrowed, not getting it other than knowing that he was up to something, while Michael was looking like he wouldn’t mind cracking David right across the face, if he dared. “Vet’s not going to come out here today--”

“Then we’ll take her in,” David interrupted. Kristy Lee’s eyebrows went up. David was aware that there was a dangerous, stubborn pitch entering his voice, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. Here was the way to get the warning to Underwood, and he knew that he would not be able to look himself in the eye for the rest of his life if she died because he didn’t take it.

“David,” Michael began, using the tone that still meant “Master”, but David was not going to chastise him for it when he was about to do the very thing that Michael had warned him of the night before. “If she has a pulled tendon as it is, the trip into town will only aggravate the injury.”

“Not if we go slow,” David said. He was talking mostly to himself now, ignoring the looks that both Kristy Lee and Michael were giving him. “Michael and I will take her in, just in case there are complications.” Michael was still, very still, while Kristy Lee knew damned good and well that something was up and also that she didn’t like it in the slightest. David ignored them both. “Let Jason know, all right?”

Kristy Lee paused in the stall with a dark line drawn down between her eyes, and David saw her glancing Michael’s way, weighing the wisdom of starting a real argument with David about what in the blue fuck he thought that he was doing. Not believing that Michael was a spy watching them was a far cry from regarding him as trustworthy enough to know that David was a spy himself.

No fool like a damned fool, David told himself, and clasped his hands behind his back in order to wait her out.

Kristy Lee very nearly decided to have herself a good “fuck it” and get into it with him then and there, anyway, David could see it in her eyes and the way that her lips parted to get moving towards the task at hand. Her teeth made a clicking noise as her mind thought better of it and reined her mouth back in again. “I’ll tell Jason, sir,” Kristy Lee finally said with a sarcasm that even the most obtuse free-born would not have been able to ignore before she turned on her heel and strode down the barn aisle again. There was a clacking noise; it took David a few seconds to realize that it was Kristy Lee drumming her nails restlessly against the butt of one of her guns.

“You don’t like to be called ‘sir,’” Michael observed softly as he exited the stall long enough to lift the mare’s halter from it’s hook.

“Nope. She’s doing it because she knows that it pisses me off.” David glanced into the stall in time to catch another of the looks that Michael could throw from beneath lowered lashes as he coaxed the halter over the mare’s ears, murmuring to her in order to keep them up, and her teeth out of his arm. “Yeah. Kristy Lee does that.”

“She belongs to you. You may be as permissive with her as you like.” But Michael’s lips were pressed into a thin line that David could not read as either anger or dismay, only sign he gave that he and David had had a discussion outside of this same stall the night before at all.

“I need you to come with me,” David said, and watched Michael’s head snap towards him. Anger. It was definitely anger, quickly masked by still glowing as a few solitary embers that the last five years had not been able to destroy. David wanted to blow on them, see what would happen. “To speak with the vet. You noticed the problem, after all.”

“I do whatever my master requires of me,” Michael said with a slight incline of his head, but David still noticed that his knuckles were white around the mare’s lead as he lead her from the stall. Jason had the carriage harnessed within moments; Michael secured the mare to the back of it, where she gave the wheels a few sour once-overs as if she would not mind biting them, either, if they gave her sufficient cause.

“No,” David said when Michael began to scramble onto the roof to sit beside Jason again. “Get inside. You don’t have a coat yet like he does, it’s too fucking cold for that.”

Michael hesitated only a second before he came down again, entered the carriage. “Your kindnesses--” he started again, still in a low voice as if he was not certain what the repercussions would be, as soon as David himself was inside and had the door closed.

“Are for me to dole out and me to divert attention from,” David answered immediately. He didn’t realize how much he sounded like a traditional master until he saw Michael lift his head and regard him with eyes that were suddenly much warier, and then he could have kicked himself if the carriage had been large enough for it. The best way to convince a wounded animal that you were not going to hurt it was surely not to get it into a confined space and then proceed to show your teeth. “And Jason knows. It’s fine.” Another flash from within those coffee-dark eyes, once again filling David with the perverse urge to make them do it again, just so that he could see who might have worn this skin five years previous.

And then you can dream about him again. That was more than enough to kill any mischievous thoughts that David had been entertaining. He turned towards the window and began fiddling with the wireless instead, while Michael sat across from him with a back too ramrod-straight and knuckles clenched too white to possibly be comfortable. Jason was driving the carriage slowly, leaving the two of them with that much more silence in which to sit and blink at each other while the wireless buzzed and prattled. It took David almost an hour to realize that most of the news was of government victories over the Resistance, and that Michael was watching the wireless as it swung and bobbed so intently that David rarely even saw him blink.

“Do you want me to turn it off?” David asked, quietly. He realized a second later that he was unconsciously imitating the tone that he had heard Michael using on the mare, and didn’t guess that it was all that far off the mark. They were traveling slowly; Michael might well make a leap right out the window if David spooked him too badly.

Michael’s mouth opened; David expected to hear once again about how, as master, he could do whatever it was that he liked and Michael would be equally pleased with it. After a long moment, Michael closed his mouth again and shook his head. “No,” he said. “It’s been a long time since I knew everything that was happening.” And he went back to watching the wireless, a taut and intent expression upon his face. Little of the news being broadcast was good for the Resistance; David thought about telling Michael that the truth of it couldn’t be guaranteed, either, only to bite it back under the assumption that this would once again be showing those unbearable kindnesses that Michael could not seem to stand. He was looking out the window, and noticed the landscape changing abruptly from field to buildings, but Michael was still paying such close attention to the wireless that he surely must have realized that they had reentered civilization by the increasing sound around the carriage rather than by looking out the windows as David was doing. David watched closely, but Michael’s shoulders did not tighten up, and his face remained smooth. He hopped lightly, easily, from the carriage as soon as it had halted and began to untie the mare’s lead from the back. She was limping worse than she had been when they had left, David noticed, and barely suppressed his wince. It was a good thing that the only people who had seen how little she had actually been injured before were those that he had no interest in trying to fool, then. It didn’t stop Michael from flashing David a look just faintly triumphant from beneath his lashes, either, David noticed.

David paid attention to Michael for only a second or so, however, trusting that Michael would be able to walk a haltered horse the half-dozen yards of so to the vet’s stable entrance without major guidance, and instead stood stock-still so that he could sample the crowd and wonder if this plan of his had really been such a wise one, after all. The crowd was thicker than normal, though the ratio of pinwheeling color to the more somber, please-don’t-notice-me clothing of the poor free remained the same, and it was hostile. David could taste anticipation and anger upon the air when he parted his lips to breathe, and thought that perhaps leaving Michael to go alone, anywhere, was not the wisest path of action that he could choose. He walked hurriedly after Michael into the relative shadow and windbreak of the barn, ignoring the faintly surprised look that Michael cast him when he realized that David was by his side. Being on the estate and away from...from all of this, even for a few days, had obviously done Michael some good if he was no longer attuned to every mood and heartbeat of the free within a twelve-foot radius of him at all times.

The vet was a powerful man just starting to run to fat and gray of skin and hair; David had a mind that his original profession had been that of blacksmith or perhaps even butcher. Both were ways of learning equine anatomy quickly and on the cheap, and it was not as if anyone was going to ask him for credentials so long as his patients lived through and then improved after whatever he did with them. He was kneeling over to lift the mare’s hoof and run his hand lightly up and down her foreleg, trusting Michael at her head to keep him from being bitten upon an ass that was probably much more substantial than it had been when he had first begun his trade.

“She’s pulled a tendon,” the vet said, releasing the mare’s foreleg gently back down to the ground and giving David a curious look. “You raise horses, you ought to have been able to spot this right away.”

The smile that he was so good at, the one that made him just another manor lord who had inherited a large piece of property and hadn’t yet driven it into splinters based mostly on luck. “Yes, well.” David lifted his shoulders into a shrug. “We’re out of liniment and can’t convince anyone to come out to the estate in order to deliver more--” The vet’s face made it clear that he would have been one of those refusing, whether he wished to betray that message or not.

“And I didn’t want to wait until it had developed into something complicated,” David finished.

The vet was born of the poor free, David could tell by his clothing and the way that he still dipped his chin in very slight deference whenever he met David’s gaze, but he had been currying influence for too long to be entirely cowed by a bright cut of fabric. Not when worn by a lesser lord born of a politically scandalous family, anyway. “Might turn into something complicated now, that you’ve brought her all the way up here for a nothing,” he muttered beneath his breath. The chin came down further, took the eyes and the whole face down with it, as David subtly stiffened. He was not a Mayer or a Clarkson or a Cruise, but he had been born to a title and this man had not, and the House would still pay only the slimmest of attentions of David were to have him quietly removed.

“Make the liniment and wrap the leg,” David said shortly. “I have further details to attend to.” His voice was just hostile enough to make the vet visibly wonder if those details didn’t involve whispering a few words into a few ears, and David guessed that he was just bastard enough to not care. He touched Michael on the arm, so that Michael curved to follow him automatically. The vet had not made a single inquiry of Michael since his arrival, even though Michael had been the one holding the mare’s lead and was clearly far more her handler than David.

With so many people about outside, there was a crush of body heat that masked the cold wind snaking its way through the buildings, finding crevices like a sneaky child. David doubted that the handful of unclothed slaves in sight appreciated the courtesy of nature, as close quarters meant that even more hands were laid upon them while their masters either did not notice or took a quick scan of the political power and favor of the one doing the groping and decided that the benefits of remaining quiet were greater than the costs of taking offense. David put his hand upon Michael’s arm and tugged him closer, as Michael was wearing pants and a thick sweater, but the brushed-steel links peeking up above the wool said clearly that he was not allowed to protest against those who decided to take a liberty. And after a few more seconds in the open air, enough to taste it again and decide that he had not been indulging in adrenaline or any of those romantic notions that Michael had warned him about, David was certain and closed his hand more tightly about Michael’s arm in order to tug him closer still. The air was hungry. The people were shoving against him in their haste to get all in one direction at once as though they were a single creature that was for once made up of drab and well-worn browns and grays and plumage brighter than bird feathers all at once, and that animal was hungry for something. David could only think of a single reason that the lines between the social strata would be so abruptly knocked out of the way. Even beneath the wool, he could feel Michael’s forearm go clenched in tension, and knew that Michael understood what the beast wanted, too.

“You should go--” Back to the carriage, David wanted to say, where at least the slavering hunger in the air might not be so thick, but if even the private kindnesses shown on his own estate were a danger, then protecting the mental well-being of a slave in a crowded public place, and on such an occasion as this, would be suicide as complete as climbing up to the top of the sleek, silvery building that held the House and throwing himself from the top. “Go inside, talk to the vet. Ask him something. Ask him anything. Pretend I’m an idiot and can’t figure out what the stallion puts into the mare. It’ll give you a reason not to be outdoors.” He released Michael’s arm as Michael looked so suddenly and pathetically grateful that David’s stomach flipped, turned to go.

“Lord Cook!”

David’s teeth were clenched together too tightly for him to hiss out a proper obscenity, but that didn’t mean that the sibilant sound that snaked out into the air before he could call it back was by any stretch of the imagination a friendly one. He drew his lips back and upwards until some optimistic soul might be able to call it a smile and pivoted in the direction of the female voice that he did not recognize. Michael had gone properly still once the situation had changed, head bowed and hands clasped in the small of his back, awaiting the orders of a true master now that they were certain that someone was observing them. David still thought very hard about putting his hand into the small of Michael’s back and bodily shoving him into the relative shadow and safety of the vet’s stable again, curious eyes be damned.

The smile became slightly more real when he turned and saw the golden hair flowing towards him, attached to golden dress and glowing, tanned skin to create impression of a woman made of sunlight entire. Underwood’s teeth were white as the winter stars that David had been watching the night before, her eyes gleaming. She gave Michael a swift, curious once-over, noting that he was new, before she dismissed him in favor of David again. Underwood--Carrie, David reminded himself, that she had been before his family had fallen out of favor--still hugged him with a fierce warmth. Slim though she was, her arms were strong with hours spent riding horses and managing as much of her estate as possible by her own hand.

“You could have told me that you were going to be here today, we could have traveled together,” Carrie said as she released him and looked up into his face. David looked hard, but she did not show such much as a glimmer of worry about her own place, or awareness of his own. “Saved the extra horses and had another set of arms to shoot if need be, besides.” Another glance at Michael, an untested slave living on a remote estate. Owners had found themselves killed with far less opportunity.

David recovered himself enough to offer Carrie both a real smile and his arm, intending to use her as both an excuse to walk away from the flow of the rest of the crowd and to take the opportunity to get her someplace relatively quiet and issue his warning. She planted her feet when David first leaned against the tide, craning her head to see where everyone else is going. The tilt of her head as realization washed over her could have meant anything at all. Carrie slid her arm through David’s, but still began to guide them in the direction of the...festivities, and short of causing a scene David found himself with no other recourse but to go with her. He glanced back over his shoulder to see that Michael was following him as silently as a ghost, and with the same amount of color in his face.

“How’s business?” David asked Carrie, glad that the crowd around them obliged him to bend his head close to her ear in order to be heard, displeased that he still had to nearly shout all the same.

Carrie lifted up her dress with one hand so that the dust of a thousand eager feet would not mar the gleam of the fabric. “Booming,” she said with a small and self-satisfied smile. “The government is interested in my beef, I’m going to have to expand in order to make certain that I can deliver them fat enough.” David found a delicate blonde eyebrow being quirked in his direction. “I’m afraid that you received the last of my good ones, everyone else who comes calling is going to have to make do with range.” She sighed. “And they did have to come calling right when I won’t be able to get more winter hay for love or money, didn’t they?” Carrie cut herself off short, tossed a look David’s way that was more than a touch worried. “I am, of course, honored to help in the war effort however I may. The inconvenience of feed is something that I will simply have to...work around.” Meaning, David was able to read between the lines, that those estates surrounding hers that weren’t as self-sufficient as David’s one and did depend upon a web of trade in order to keep themselves fed might find that they were not living quite so fat and prosperously until spring brought with it a surplus of wild game again.

“Your sense of duty,” David said, not lying, “was never a question in my mind.” He took a deep breath, told himself that if he did not do it now he could have no idea when the opportunity was going to present itself again, and pressed his mouth against Carrie’s ear so tightly that she could surely feel his lips tremble. “However, you might want to be more careful about to whom you turn over your stock.”

Carrie stopped walking so quickly that she nearly stumbled over the hem of her dress and had to snatch it up so that she would not fall. She wore an uncertain look upon her face as she leaned back and scrutinized David hard. “Lord Cook,” she said slowly, her voice crisp and formal, giving nothing away, “I can assure you, my patriotism is impeccable. To imply that I shouldn’t be doing what the House is asking of me--”

David squeezed at her hand. “I would imply nothing like that,” he told her. “I was referring to your private sales.”

Carrie’s face cleared. She nodded once, still looking at David as if she was searching for something in him, and answered softly, “Thank you for the warning. I’ll see that I go through my ledgers as soon as I return to the estate.” Someone jostled her hard from behind; a woman wearing deep purple. One of their class, then, so that the most that Carrie could do in retaliation was thrown her an ugly look, but David did not think that they could receive any better reminder that the day’s festivities had rendered the city even more crowded than usual, and there were many more ways to be observed than the creaking cameras turning this way and that as they surveyed the human cattle in the yard. David looked over his shoulder to check on Michael and found him nearly standing upon David’s own heels, keeping close to avoid being separated in the throng. His face was milky.

Carrie followed the direction of David’s gaze when she realized that he had slowed down. “Your man doesn’t look well,” she said.

“He’s accustomed to rural estates,” David said. “Close quarters don’t suit him well, I think.” He clenched his free hand into a hard fist, torn between sending Michael back to the carriage and at the same time realizing that this was not a good day for a slave to be seen slipping through the crowd alone, and Carrie’s fingers entwined in his other hand were still pulling him inexorably forward.

“You mean, what we are about to witness does not suit him well,” Carrie corrected David, a crispness to her tone that alarmed him for the briefest of moments before he looked down at her and saw that it was not reaching her eyes. “You have a reputation for kindness, David.” David did not look back at Michael, because he knew that Michael, about to be sick across his own feet or not, would not be able to keep the glimpse of I told you so from wafting across his features. “Don’t worry, I won’t--” Carrie paused and looked ahead of them, where the dark twist of Lady Jolie’s hair was visible over the deep blue fabric and silver thread of her winter gown. She had her boy with her again, David noticed, and cared as little for the cold upon him as she had the last time. “I won’t mention it to indiscreet ears. I hate these spectacles, myself. I think that they’re cruel, but--” The slim golden shoulders lifted into a shrug even as Carrie’s face twisted in distaste. “I guess we all have to decide where our lines lie.”

David was not certain enough in the half-statements that had made up the conversation thus far to do any more than squeeze at Carrie’s hand in his own as they walked forward together, to answer softly, “Yes, we do.” The crowd was thick enough now, and David could feel enough of the hunger roiling off of them to ensure that he might never eat again, that he reached back to take hold of Michael and be certain that he would not be pulled off into the many-peopled jaws. Not by the hand, as he had done with Carrie; rumors were borne by the people who did not appear as if they were looking his way at all. He took Michael by the wrist and thought that he felt the tendons and skin fluttering beneath the sweater, thought that Michael might even be on the verge of reaching for David’s own hand if not for the crowd.

There was a scaffold that stretched far enough above the head and shoulders of the crowd that it was almost as impossible to not see as the steel of the House. It wouldn’t be wise at all to be seen looking away from it, so David made certain his stare was long, his expression blank. He didn’t break it until he felt Michael behind him jump with someone taking a liberty and spun about so that he could snarl, “Does he look as though he’s going to be a runaway when I have my hand about his fucking wrist?” It was a poor free, not a member of the aristocracy, and the blind fury in David’s voice was enough to send him disappearing into the bodies again with a flash of gray like a fleeing mouse. David pulled Michael even closer to him after that, with his hand half-resting upon the steel collar and half upon the warm band of flesh revealed at the nape of Michael’s neck. He thought that Michael might have broken his arm, had there not been such ample evidence in front of them as to what happened to slaves who misbehaved one too many times.

“You would think that a field slave would be more accustomed to the cold,” David remarked very loudly to Carrie after it had become clear that Michael’s shivers were not going to stop. He saw Lady Jolie’s head twitch very slightly in his direction, noting the remark. See and be seen.

Carrie only shook her head and continued to watch the scaffolding. “It’s not necessary to be so cruel,” she repeated.

The scaffolding was wood, and it was not permanent. The individual beams would be donated off to the poor free for their construction efforts in a raffle as soon as the bodies had been removed, and the poor free all the more grateful to the government afterwards for its kindness. It didn’t have to be anything more than temporary. Slaves didn’t often run, certainly not the three times required before the government would offer their masters the pittance price to sell them off for nuclear work or to Eastland. There were three bodies--people, still, though it hurt to look at them--on the scaffold with rough rope wrapped around their necks. Their owners had not seen need of the minor purse that they would be able to obtain by selling their slaves into dregs work. None of the people standing had all of their limbs left, and two of the three had facial mutilations that made their mouths twist up like a the rictus grins of skulls even though David could see their eyes blinking and knew that they were not dead just yet. It took a high amount of desperation to make a slave run three times.

Michael’s hands were twisting and clenching by his sides, as if he wanted to reach for something or someone but could not possibly decide what. David took a deep breath through his nose and massaged at the back of Michael’s neck, just for a second, the largest comfort that he dared to give. Michael cut him a look from the corner of his eye which made David think that Michael might even be angrier with him for having made the attempt at all. David couldn’t look away from the gallows at the crucial moment, but he felt the muscles in the back of Michael’s neck tighten as if he received an electric shock, heard the sharp inhale of breath. Carrie did her duty, and then turned away once the legs had stopped kicking in resistance and were only giving the spasmodic twitches of the body refusing to accept that the brain was dead.

“Cruel,” Carrie said with great finality. Her face was pale. She touched at David’s arm and said, “I have duties to attend to, but...”

“It was good to see you,” David told her, and meant it.

A touch of the color came back into Carrie’s face and her mouth lifted into a smile. “You as well, David,” she answered him. “Be careful of yourself?”

“Of course I will,” David answered her. He watched as the slender golden figure disappeared through the crowd and then took a breath, wondering if he should remove his obviously unwelcome hand from the back of Michael’s neck, wondering if it would be too obvious if he were to do so. “Okay,” he murmured. “Okay, come on.” But the direction in which he started leading the two of them was not back towards the vet or the carriage.

“Master.” David did not bother to correct the address, not in public and not when there was such a shining thread of strain winding through Michael’s voice.

“There’s one more thing that I need to do,” David answered calmly, and continued towards the alley, the same alley that he had visited with Archuleta only a handful of days before. Michael’s pulse was fluttering under his hand; it spiked hard at the realization that David was going to keep them in this place even longer.

“You can’t give her any stronger a warning,” Michael hissed at him in a tone so loud and vehement that it was all that David could do to keep from cutting his eyes from one side and then to the next, to see if anyone had overheard. “You’re already about to tip your hand. Master--David--please.” David highly doubted that Michael was thinking about the ramifications to David’s career as a spy, such as Michael had figured it out, or even what those ramifications meant to Michael’s own long-term survival, only that he was acting off of a pure, animal need to be gone. His voice had started to tilt upwards by the end, so that the crowd had heard him begging David and was now looking across the two of them with open curiosity.

David twisted his fingers through the links of Michael’s collar and twisted his head down hard, even though Michael was scarcely more than an inch taller than David himself. His hands were cruel and his face was hard, and he could feel Michael tensing up for the previous three days of his life to have been a lie before David’s lips touched against his ear. “Michael,” David said. “I know.”

“You don’t,” Michael said softly.

David continued as if he had not spoken. “But I know what I’m doing, too, and there’s one more thing that I have to do before we can go. Just trust me, please.” It was difficult to keep his face looking as if he would not mind striking Michael down right there in the street for giving the wrong response to his order and his voice at the same time as gentle as one he would use on a horse that was on the verge of spooking. He was not certain that he had succeeded until Michael let out a long, shuddering breath that was nearly a whistle and gave a nod so faint that David felt it against his cheek more than he saw it. He still jerked on the collar hard enough that Michael nearly gagged to get them moving through the crowd again, trusting in his black expression to keep poor free and aristocracy alike from taking liberties with Michael as he walked sometimes beside and sometimes behind. He skirted in as wide a circle from the scaffold as he could manage; there was a snarl to his lips that for once cowed back even the flower-bright fabrics of the upper classes from touching David’s property without his leave.

The alley that he wanted was a long way from the House and the travels of the wealthy, and its street even more sparsely-populated than the last time that David had walked it. He took a deep breath and kept dragging Michael along, certain that anyone who saw them would only assume that David was looking for a conveniently isolated spot from which to use his body slave.

“Where are we going?” Michael finally recovered enough to ask, even though David could still feel him all but vibrating beneath his fingertips and thought that this was merely the eye, not proof that the storm had passed in its entirety.

“Trust me,” David answered. He heard Michael make a breathy sound, quickly suppressed, and thought that it might be the beginnings of a bitter laugh. He dug in his feet so hard that it threw off David’s stride and nearly ended in him inadvertently strangling Michael when he saw that David was taking them into an alley. David didn’t respond until they were well inside the shadows, where no one from the street would be able to see what they were or were not doing, and then he released the grip that he had been maintaining on Michael’s collar the entire while. There were red marks etched into the skin from how hard he had been twisting it.

“Stay here,” David instructed Michael before he went even further inside, to where Michael could not see what he was doing, either, and removed the familiar brick so that he could slide another scrap of paper behind it. Underwood has been compromised. Get her out of there. Michael hadn’t moved when David returned to him, his eyes dark and fixed at a place on the opposite wall as if he meant to tear it down. It was a good show, and if there had not been tremors running through his body like the prelude to an earthquake David might even have believed it. He grabbed for Michael’s wrist rather than his collar and was proven right when Michael did not ask him what he had been doing in the far end of the alley, when the options were fairly limited.

Maybe he thinks that I’m the kind of man who can’t help but jack off after he watches a good execution. David doubted that his face was providing counter-evidence. He gripped at Michael’s wrist hard and stared straight ahead as he dragged him back into and then through the crowds, towards the carriage. He did not look at the bodies that were swaying slightly in the northern wind as they hung from the scaffold. Neither, he noticed, did Michael. Some of the slaves that David witnessed could not look away, but they were all mostly young. Meanwhile, for so long as Michael remained on his feet, David could still feel the tremors increasing in intensity. As soon as they were within distance of the vet, he shoved Michael towards the carriage. “Draw the windows closed.” It was the gentlest tone that he had been able to use in a long while, and he saw Michael’s stance change as he marked the difference.

If the veterinarian thought it strange that David was coming in to inquire after the mare himself rather than sending his man, he was experienced enough not to let it show. The pulled tendon had developed complications. She would need to stay rather than making the long trek back to the estate. “Wouldn’t have been complicated if she had been left in her stall to rest,” the vet could not stop himself from pointing out, choking back the words when David directed him with an icy stare in response.

Jason was pale, too, when David came back outside, even though he had been able to stay with the horses and hadn’t been forced to witness anything. “Just get us out of here,” David said to him as he opened the door to the carriage in order to climb in.

Jason nodded once, blue eyes already fixed on the horizon that would take them home and refusing to look anywhere else. “You got it,” he said before he snapped the reins, almost before David managed to secure the door.

End Part Nine

Continue to Part Ten