The lock came off in Daniel’s hand, and the door swung wide.
He peered inside, and five women were inside, all beastfolk. Nobody moved.
“Out. And here, help me open the others.”
Daniel tossed the key to a shocked woman with fox ears and a tail.
“What? I understand you…” Her ears flattened. “You’re not one of them. You smell… different.”
“Glad to know I wash up well.” He grinned and nodded. “I killed all the slavers. Come on, help me free the others so we can talk… What’s wrong?”
They looked to be between fourteen and thirty.
The various beastfolks’ shoulders, tails, and ears fell. A moment later, their legs gave way as they collapsed onto their butts. Two started weeping, holding onto each other.
“We’re dead. Our slavers are dead. We’re dead.”
Daniel scratched his head, unsure what to do. After a time, the oldest woman, who seemed to be the older sister of the one he’d offered the key to, pulled herself together.
“I don’t understand what you are doing. But you speak beastfolk… You wanted us to gather all the slaves?”
“Yeah.” He stood to the side. “I don’t plan on hurting you. I’m just trying to figure out what to do with you. I’m not from this kingdom. I don’t know much about the culture.”
The fox woman’s ears folded back.
“I see. There is a lot to learn then. Allow me to help. Some wagons have hidden cages they stick the illegal slaves in…”
Daniel watched her usher out the other crying girls. They actually fell to the ground by the dead human, hands in their faces, weeping over him.
“Well, I didn’t expect that… Carl?”
He went to the other carts and gradually started pulling everything inside into [Vault].
The undead bird chirped atop the wagon, dozens more surrounding the area.
“Slaves in this kingdom are literally property. Objects. They’re also killed if their master is killed. Often the same way. It is law. The exception is if they were illegally obtained. Then they are sold at an open auction. At least, so I’ve heard from dungeon crawlers.”
“Well… That’s not good.”
Daniel pondered that disturbing information as he emptied a wagon of travel supplies.
“Can’t they escape back to their homeland?”
Carl snickered, head shaking and tilting to the side.
“You want these slaves to brave the human roads and wilderness through forts, patrols, and the monsters of the wilderness? They’d be killed on sight.”
“Good point, Carl. Good point…”
He emptied three trade and supply wagons by the time all the slaves were on the side of the road, looking lost and hopeless. The fourth one was not supplies. It was a desk bolted to the floor. He noticed a strongbox in the corner, and shelf after shelf of ledgers. Folded papers were tied in bundles with waxed string. The paperwork.
Daniel stood in the doorway for a while, still pondering what Carl was feeding him, before he climbed in. He put the [Vault] card against the desk and let it take the lot.
Clara, sweetheart, you’re going to have a fun afternoon. I know all of this goes to your room. Your closet must be getting pretty full. We need to do some renovations. Don’t we?
The strongbox key came from the man he’d killed at the river. It came out to five hundred and forty-one gold. The pile also had some silver, copper, and iron mixed with it. But that hardly mattered next to the gold.
He counted it twice. From what he’d learned at lunch at the inn, two iron bought a loaf. Five hundred and forty-one gold was a quantity of bread he could not picture the shape of.
I could feed them for life with this kind of money…
Asper, Julia will be taken care of.
When he finally left the wagon to stand in front of the shifting throng, he felt more uncomfortable than any moment he’d had since awakening in Carl’s 1st layer.
Consequences keep stacking.
The count came out to thirty-eight.
Nineteen elves, and only two of those were men. Carl mused that humans were the opposite of elves; humans liked the women, whereas elven women loved human male slaves. It was some kind of kink thing Daniel wasn’t all that interested in.
Twelve were beastfolk, split about even between genders, and four of them were children. Elven men and human women tended to be more inclined toward purchasing the beastfolk.
Seven human women were in the last wagon, in the one with the hidden compartment. It made sense since they were still in the human kingdom. Human slavery was illegal.
Daniel walked the line twice to be sure, and nobody looked at him while he did it.
“Carl. Where’d the human men go?”
The slaves looked at one another, swallowing, and followed his gaze to the undead bird. They probably thought he was insane.
“Sold.” The raven shuffled. “They always sell fast. The human women sell better amongst the beastfolk.”
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He shook his head and held out his card, extracting food ingredients.
Daniel managed to convince them to help him cook. He had no answers. Neither did they. He was just trying to come to terms with what he’d just done. There were bodies littered around the area. Julia, One, and Alys were still in the bloody field, waiting for him.
He didn’t count what he’d collected. His wife would be happily sorting everything.
The fox woman was called Renna, and her younger sister was Sabbi.
Renna did most of the talking.
“Eleven of us came out of the land to the east,” she said, squatting on her heels by the fire with her tail wrapped around her ankles. “They come around the border villages when the harvest goes bad, or fires ruin crops. It’s not stealing in our culture if the patriarch signs over our lives for the continuation of the tribe.”
“Unreal.” Daniel sat back and looked up at the blue sky. “So your people sell those who are the least useful to the tribe to survive. Harsh, but more of a realistic take. I wouldn’t put it past them ruining your crops to force that outcome… What a world this is.”
“That part is legal.” Her ears flicked. “The papers say we were bought from an elven trader in Ostgate, because a beastfolk bought inside human lands is a cultural problem. A beastfolk bought in elven territory is not. Every one of us has been sold three times.”
Daniel turned that over.
“So the papers are all lies?”
Renna shook her head.
“The papers are excellent.”
“What a mess.”
He learned things all afternoon, in pieces, from whoever would speak to him.
That the ring ran the same road four times a year and had done so eleven: forty-four trips.
That the elf women came off ships and nobody would say more about that. His guess: they weren’t native elves. That four of the beastfolk children had come with mothers and had arrived without them. That was heartbreaking.
This isn’t a human, elf, or beastfolk problem…
All of them do it in one way or another.
The human women were not doing well. Two were sick, and most of them had issues with their teeth. They came from the slums and were starving. They offered themselves as slaves just to survive; only that was illegal, so they came willingly.
The youngest was ten.
At noon he went to get the others. Renna went with him. Mainly to make sure he’d come back. They were terrified he’d ditch them. He couldn’t blame them.
It felt like a tear in his heart. Like a part of him was missing, and he just couldn’t feel it. He saw it in their eyes, in how they quaked when he came near, in how their pleas bled into their words. If hopelessness was a taste, then it was all they tasted. They needed to be held.
But Daniel was split for the first time.
Carl tilted his head to look at him from his shoulder.
“I’ve never seen you like this, friend. What has you so twisted? Feel bad for them?”
He followed Renna’s mannerisms as she introduced herself to Julia and Alys. One was harping on her about standing up with her back straight, speaking from the chest, and being assertive.
“It’s more than that… I have a hand in this. But I don’t know what to do. I don’t have an answer.”
“Just kill them. Put them out of their misery swiftly. Better a quick death than what awaits them.”
Daniel smiled.
“Thanks, Carl.”
“For?”
“For helping me see I need real advice… I’ll ask Clara.”
The bird’s feathers ruffled.
“Of course you’d go to that brat. They’re more trouble than they’re worth.”
“Not to you. But I think they’re worth more than you can see.”
“Yes, the cores inside them are worth something. But sure, friend. Be an angel.”
Alys sat with the human women most of the day when they got back and did not once try to convert anybody or bless anything.
“The temple doesn’t permit it,” she said when he finally asked her. “Ownership. It isn’t permitted… It isn’t condemned either.”
Her mouth went flat.
“There’s a difference, and everyone in the order knows exactly what the difference is. We don’t hold slaves, and don’t take them in if they come to us. That would be illegal.”
Julia found him at the tail of the last wagon while he pretended to check a wheel.
“They think you own them. You can just forge the paper that they sold them to you.”
“I thought about that… There are some issues.”
“Renna asked me what you were like.” Julia’s eyes were swollen, and her voice had gone flat. “She was asking if you talked to dead birds often, and if you were a necromancer.”
“What’d you tell her?”
She smiled.
“That you were a Contractor. They have some back home. They call them Spiritualists, though. I said you may seem distant, but you’ve got a really good heart.”
He scratched his brow.
“I don’t know what to do. But you and Alys aren’t part of this. We’ll head back and bury Asper. I promise. I made him a promise. I’ll tell you when we get back to the city.”
She was quiet for a time, then came in and hugged him.
“What was that for?”
Julia wiped at her cheeks.
“Just seemed like you needed it. I know I needed it. Have you asked Clara?”
“I can’t. Not until I sleep.”
Julia’s eyes tightened, and she sniffed back her tears.
“Then I’ll tell everyone that you’ll tell them what you decide tomorrow morning. You have to consult with your wife.”
Daniel hung his head with a long sigh. Then he chuckled, rose, and pulled her into a hug that made her go beet red this time.
“You’re hurting so much… Asper was a good brother.”
Her muscles loosened, and she returned the embrace, shaking now.
“He was,” she sniffled. “He was the one who wanted to keep you a secret… He said you needed help. He felt like you were a good one. A lot of legends say angels bring destruction. The Temple of the Light says you bring blessings.”
Daniel felt a tear fall from his own eye. His first.
“It sure feels like I’m a curse.”
“But you’re not… Everyone else is the curse. Clara agrees with me.”
“You wouldn’t be wrong… Thank you, Julia.”
The day fell to night. No one came along the road to interrupt them.
He got to know each of the thirty-eight souls whose lives were now in his hands.
Each of them talked about themselves, weaving their lives into his for the slightest bit of sympathy. Daniel knew the tactic, even if he didn’t know where he learned it.
When he lay down to close his eyes, he could hear their quiet sobs and reassuring whispers. He’d come to collect some cores for his wife with what seemed to be a good party.
Now, that party was mostly dead. He’d killed over thirty people. And he had thirty-eight slaves clawing at his back to save them from certain death.
Clara, I need you.
Her glorious, golden face bloomed through the darkness as he found himself in her lap. His angel’s fingers stroked his cheek, her seafoam-blue eyes showing nothing but light.
“Daniel, I am here. I crafted the answer as you toiled gathering all those cores.”
His wife slid a card into his hand: the childish picture of a hillside farmstead.
“Let’s make them a part of our world.”
[⟡ Ground #1: Farmstead &&]
[Opens a gate to the outer fields, beyond the walls of the Silver Kingdom.]
[Gate can be opened and used for 30 minutes before the King is removed. Restores on a long rest. The Ground does not close.]
[Bounded by the Shadow. The Shadow yields to labor.]
[What is planted grows. What remains changes.]
[The Queen may not enter.]
“I feel offended at that last part… Why does our land hate me?”