The loading bar reached 31% and stopped.
Ezra waited. He was still on the floor.
He had, at some point, pulled the fallen sheet over himself, which was not modesty so much as the fact that he had a wooden chastity cage padlocked to his body and looking at it made him want to leave his own skin.
Which man could tolerate being in such a situation? Hmm? BDSM? Not for me then!
<<████░░░░░░░░ 31%>>
Still nothing.
"Come on."
<<████░░░░░░░░ 31%>>
<<Environmental Risk Assessment: Elevated.>>
<<Suspending Installation to Preserve Host Function.>>
<<Partial Access Granted. Full Initialisation Pending.>>
"Pending on what?"
<<Pending...>>
"That's not an answer, that's the same word again."
The panel dimmed to about half brightness and sat there, patient as a streetlight.
Ezra put his face in his hands.
Okay....okay...let's think through what we have here.
He had a system, sort of, at thirty-one percent, which at this point just felt like the world...the worlds were trying to fuck with him.
Second place was dying for an earbud.
He made himself think, his first thoughts were to look through the bodies memories.
They existed as a sperate plane in his mind, like someone had compartmentalized all of it into a nice drunkenly written file
Soren's memories were still settling, and they came easier now, less like a bucket and more like remembering a movie he'd watched drunk.
He went through them on purpose, which turned out to be a horrible way to spend ten minutes, and came out the other side with a list.
First off...I am a...was a slave?
Legally, completely, on paper filed with something called the Bindwright Guild.
The mark on his wrist was called a Bindmark and it wasn't fashion, it was a leash tied to his soul.
When Vesper gave him a direct order, his body did it. Not 'he chose to.' His body did it, and his opinion arrived afterward.
Two. Except it hadn't. He'd been awake for twenty minutes and nothing had made him do anything.
His mind still had the instruction of Vesper's command to clean the place up, but the only thing he was doing was curling up the floor in thought.
Ezra looked at his wrist again. Three lines and a circle, grey and cold.
In Soren's memory the mark had always had a low orange glow to it, faint but there, like a coal.
He remembered looking at it at night. He remembered hating it.
It wasn't glowing now.
It died with him, Ezra thought slowly. He died, and it let go of him, and then I showed up before it finished switching off completely.
He turned the wrist back and forth. The metal band didn't move. The mark stayed grey.
So it's still on me. It probably isn't really connected to her...but if it snapped she would have known...so the connection is there but the enforcement isn't?
Which meant Vesper Callowmere owned a slave who was not, in any way that mattered, owned.
Ezra sat with that for a second and felt something that was not quite happiness.
Why do I get isekaied to a situation like this?
Would it have been too much to ask to get a rich family...with maids...and too much money to spend?!?
He couldn't help but lament, though it was his way to cope with the situation and new knowledge.
So this brought us to three, and this was the good one: she didn't know.
Soren's memory was clear on it. The Bindmark ran both ways. The holder could feel the slave at all times, a low background hum.
Alive or dead. Near or far. When a slave died, the connection snapped, and the holder felt it snap.
Vesper hadn't felt anything, because there had been no gap. Soren went out and Ezra came in and the hum never stopped.
So she thought her slave was fine. She thought he was down here scrubbing her sheets like she'd told him to.
Which means I have time, Ezra thought. Which means I need to not waste it standing here half naked.
Four. And this was the one that made his stomach drop.
Every slave's Bindmark was registered.
Once a year, or whenever a house sold or transferred property, a Bindmaster came and inspected the marks.
It was mainly done to confirm the strength of the slave mark and who the slave belonged to, especially when it was slaves that were for commercial purposes.
Soren's next inspection was in seven weeks.
Ezra didn't know what would happen to a slave whose soul didn't match the bond, but he wasn't planning to.
"Cool," Ezra said. "Seven weeks. Great. Love that."
He got up.
His legs held. That was novel. Soren's legs had not reliably held for about eight months.
He found his clothes in a basket by the door, folded, plain grey linen, the standard issue.
He got into them and the padlocked device made the trousers sit strangely and he decided very firmly that this was a problem for later Ezra.
Then he stopped in front of the standing mirror, because he had to eventually.
The face looking back was not his.
Ezra Vance had been a thick-necked, blunt-featured guy with a permanent five o'clock shadow and eyes set a little too close together.
He'd made peace with it in high school.
This was not that.
The boy in the mirror was pale, with dark hair that fell past his jaw, and features that were fine enough to be startling.
Not delicate exactly. He had a jaw, and shoulders that were wider than the rest of him suggested.
But the face was pretty in a way that made Ezra deeply uncomfortable, because he knew, from four years of memories he hadn't lived, exactly what that face had cost.
He also understood something else. In Soren's earliest memories the reflection had been softer. Rounder. Almost girlish.
He'd been growing out of it. Filling in. Getting taller, getting a jaw, getting 'male'.
And Vesper's cruelty had scaled up right alongside it, month by month, year by year, in exact proportion.
Ezra stared at the mirror for a long moment.
He let out a sigh and turned to go, and the panel brightened.
<<GRAND LOTTERY SYSTEM (PARTIAL)>>
<<HOST: EZRA VANCE>>
<<VESSEL: SOREN, UNRANKED>>
<<FATE TICKETS: 0>>
<<FATE POINTS: 0>>
<<FIRST ISSUANCE PENDING QUALIFYING EVENT...>>
"What counts as a qualifying event?"
<<SURPRISE ME...>>
"You know what?" Ezra said, "that's worse."
He opened the door and went out into the hall.
...
Vesper's estate at this hour was mostly asleep.
Ezra walked it on, letting Soren's memory pick the turns, which worked disturbingly well.
Left at the tapestry. Down the servants' stair, not the main one...never the main one.
Past the kitchens where a single lamp was burning.
He kept his head down and his hands where people could see them if anyone passed lest he got in trouble.
The slave quarters sat behind the stable block, a long low stone building with a slate roof and one door.
Ezra stopped outside it.
Soren's memory offered up the relevant fact, and Ezra had a full three seconds to process it before he went in.
There were twelve slaves in Vesper's household staff.
Eleven of them were women.
And the reason for him being here was not complicated.
Vesper had bought a boy who looked like a girl, put him in with the girls, and thought it was funny.
"Right," Ezra said under his breath.
He pushed the door open.
Warm air came out, and lamplight, along with it the smell of bodies and old straw and soap.
Two long rows of bunks. Most of them full, most of the shapes in them not moving. A single lamp burning low at the far end on a table where three women sat with a deck of worn wooden cards.
All three heads turned.
The one nearest the lamp was small and sharp-faced with a mess of copper hair she'd clearly given up on, and she was already grinning before she'd finished turning around.
"Well, look what crawled back," said Nessa Ryn. "Half past one in the morning. She kept you a while tonight."