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The news fell official today: there would be no more slaves, ever, in the Artesian Empire.
Kallias had been warned, as had everyone, for a few months now. The Kings had announced this on the very day of their ascension to the joined thrones. But a few months had not been enough to ready himself.
Some part of him was still surprised he had not simply been killed after Kastor. As a slave to the traitor and usurpator to the throne, it would not have been seen as unfair that he be executed with his master. But nobody had come for him. As chaos settled down in the castle and as the Kings declared their decision to unite their kingdoms, he felt all but... forgotten. Left to rest in his master's slave quarters, resting without any task at hand, waiting. It felt like his life had ended but he was still alive.
As it started, first the training gardens were closed. No more slaves would be taught to serve. Then, progressively, slaves were taken away from the hard working duties, then from the domestic tasks, until it was the last day of the pleasure slaves as well.
He had been met with a woman he had never before seen in the castle. She looked Veretian and kind, two things that didn't go together and that made him uncomfortable as she smiled at him.
“You are Kallias, correct? I am Madeleine. Our Kings appointed me to help you in this transition. I'll be discussing your choices with you. How do you feel about becoming a free man?”
He had been honest.
“I don't want to.”
“I understand that this is a frightening change,” she had said with a tone that made him believe it really was. “How long have you served in the castle?”
They had spoken for a while. She had told him the Kings were offering all slaves to become servants: they would have no masters, they would be taught a work or a trade of some kind, and they would be paid for their services, with the freedom to leave if they wanted to.
“What sort of trade?” He had asked.
Working in the kitchens. Cleaning clothes. Sewing them. Serving meals. Refreshing rooms. She listed hard, physical tasks like that for a while, and said when he frowned that he could learn, and that he shouldn't underestimate himself. He felt a little sick.
“I can sing and play music and serve in bed. I spent years learning those things and making it my art. Are my Kings so cruel to say that those things are useless in their empire? What will become of me, if I do not want to become a lowly servant?”
“I know this is frightening,” Madeleine said, even though she frowned a little. “The Kings are giving all slaves a year to find a work they can achieve in the castle, being fed and clothed as you were before. After this delay, if you do not find any task to your liking, then you will be free to leave.”
So they would cast him out. He would be left on the streets. No masters. No rewards. Nothing but himself. Kastor had been a neglectful master, but he had been his master no less. Kallias had known what his purpose was all this time. He served, because it pleased his master that he did. He served, because he had a secret, and he knew he had done right.
“There are still other options. You could try to become a bard,” Madeleine insisted, probably trying to be helpful. “There will be competition, but your skill is known already. The brothels will not disappear, either.”
He looked at her in disbelief and disgust. She didn't even look like she was joking. A spike of anger pierced through his heart.
“I was a favorite of the King, and you would have me become a whore? I am not some Veretian pet, hiding my face in make-up and spreading my legs to be given jewellry!”
His outburst had not been appreciated. She had dismissed him and said they would speak again later, when he would have had some time to think. She had ended their meeting with cruel words:
“You are not a child, Kallias. It is time you learn to take care of yourself.”
He had not been able to sleep all night. He thought of what he knew of brothels, stinky little houses were slaves were treated like so many pieces of meat. He thought of dirty servants carrying wood for the fires or washing bedsheets. He thought of a boy that had been sold away and that could be anywhere now, living forever the life they had been taught. He hoped Erasmus had a kind master that would never throw him out.
It is time you learn to take care of yourself . Well, he could not do that. His life was about taking care of somebody else's needs. How could the Kings take that away from him?
Being a bard. He would have to learn to understand money, and try to sell himself. No matter how he looked at it, it felt terrible. He had been raised, chosen, trained to be somebody else's. He didn't want to have to go from masters to masters to gain some money. He didn't want to have to prove himself against others.
In the end, leaving the castle was the most terrifying ideas of all. So he agreed to stay. He agreed to try to work and to learn to keep his own money. Slaves spoke together. They tried to reassure themselves, saying surely there would still be need of them for what they were. Not all nobles could enjoy the thought of being left without any slaves to warm their bed, no? Surely the Kings would allow their court to keep their slaves, if they did so discreetly?
On his first day, he and a half-dozen slaves were brought to the kitchens. He was the youngest and the prettiest of the bunch. He wondered if the others like him had chosen the brothels. There were men and women with him that had been slaves in the castle for over twenty or thirty years. They didn't look readier than he was when a man came in and welcomed them.
Kallias was tasked with peeling potatoes. The knife was big and awkward in his hands. He managed not to cut himself, but his back quickly hurt from staying bent over his work, and the blade felt unequal and pushed at his thumb. The man came by to look at what he was doing by the time he had peeled three potatoes, in about half an hour.
“You're cutting off too much of the flesh here,” said the instructor, not unkindly. “See? You must follow the curve better, otherwise we lose good food. Try to be careful.”
He nodded tightly, but felt tears of rage and shame and despair building up in his eyes as he tried to obey. Everything hurt.
They were at work for about two hours in total, then they had a break. He heard a woman complaining that cutting raw fish was the most disgusting thing she had ever done, and that the smell would never leave her hands. A Veretian man was with them all and listened to her complains, nodding in understanding, but telling her that of course the smell would leave, and she had done a good job, and wasn't she proud of her accomplishment? Weren't they all?
In the afternoon, he was led down the stairs, to a room filled with steam and warmth, where clothes were washed. He was assigned to folding ironed sheets with a man a bit older than he, and then to carrying them away, upstairs, to the guest rooms. His partner was stronger than he was, but Kallias felt sick with the heat. He left gratefully to carry a pile of sheets up the stairs, away from the steam, but underestimated the weight of his burden. He fell face first in the stairs, just as he was passing in front of two guards. One bursted out laughing. The other hid a smile poorly as he asked if he was okay.
“I'm fine,” Kallias snapped, trying to gather the unfolded sheets, stepping on one, falling again. He cried out, feeling an intense bolt of pain in his knee.
“Shit,” the man swore, and he was suddenly next to him, taking the heavy sheets away. “Here, let me -are you okay? Hey, hey, don't cry!”
But Kallias could not help it. He started shaking and crying and he hid his face in his hands. He heard vaguely someone saying “Go get someone”, and footsteps, but he couldn't bring himself to care. He felt miserable. He felt out of place. He felt useless. He cried ugly, broken sobs, his lips pulled into a painful grin and his eyes burning.
“Hey -um -kid, look, breath, okay? Breath, you're fine! That's just a little scratch!”
It didn't feel like just a little scratch and he wanted to say so and to tell that guard to go to hell instead of witnessing his misery and shame, when there came another voice with an accent.
“What is happening here, soldier?”
“O-oh -hum, my Lord, it is just a slave -that is, he is a servant now. He hurt himself falling in the stairs, but -he'll be fine.”
“Poor boy,” said the voice, and it sounded like the man it belonged to truly thought so, and that alone was surprising enough to get Kallias to look up, despite the despair he felt at 'he'll be fine', because if he was fine he would have to keep going and he didn't want to be fine.
Yet a part of him still bound to his training felt a greater pang of shame than anything else as he saw the stranger that stood above him, dressed in regal clothes that were neither Akielon nor Veretians -but Patran. He recognised Torveld because he had seen him in portraits, because he was expected to know all the noblemen that his King could have to meet.
“M-my Lord”, he found himself stammering and bowing down like he should, only his knee hurt when he lowered himself and his reverence was ruined by his shudder of pain.
“It is well, boy,” Torveld said warmly, comfortingly. “Don't hurt yourself. Erasmus, will you bring this boy to the palace physician? You will find your way better than I, no doubt, and the Kings are waiting for me.”
He kept talking except Kallias's heart stopped when he heard the name. He looked up and there was the silhouette he had been ignoring, next to Lord Torveld, and it was a young man, tall and lovely, and for a moment he thought it could not be him because Erasmus was smaller and younger than this man, but then it clicked that he had grown, far away from him.
He had grown because he was alive.
“Of course,” said Erasmus, and his voice was just like it had been then, boyish and clear even if he was a man now. He stepped forward with his pretty face and lovely curls and crouched and offered Kallias a hand with a sympathetic face. “Can you stand up?”
“Erasmus,” came Kallias' answer, foolish and shocked.
He frowned, the softest of frowns, like he had used to a long time ago when he didn't understand something and was a bit frustrated that he didn't, and at the time Kallias would softly make fun of him.
Then he looked... Startled. He almost stepped back. Kallias looked at his hand, outstretched.
“O-oh.”
“Erasmus? What is this?” Asked Lord Torveld, who had been leaving but paused now. He sounded concerned.
“He is my friend,” came the reply.
That was so Erasmus. Genuine, young, so emotional. The guard was watching it all happening like he didn't understand anything.
“Your friend?” Repeated Torveld. He said what Kallias wanted to.
“We were taught together,” said Erasmus softly.
His big eyes were filled with shock and troubled. Kallias felt so many things at the same time, so much more than frustration and shame as he had earlier, so many contradictory things.
“You are alive,” he murmured finally, because it made it sound more real that it was really him.
“So are you,” Erasmus replied immediately.
“Erasmus, they don't want me to be a slave anymore,” he said brokenly. It was sudden and inappropriate to say it now, to say it like he had a right to complain, of anything, after they last time they had seen one another. He should not have sounded so pleading. He should not have been so relieved and desperate to see him again.
“Erasmus, I... Must go to the Kings,” said Torveld. He sounded unsure. “Will you and your friend be alright?”
Torveld was Erasmus' master. Kallias had thought that Patras was abolishing slavery too, and he became more confused and lost when he saw his friend's neck, free and too thin without any collar, and his delicate wrists painted with hennea, but not even cuffed. He had cried when they had removed his . He kept them under his bed preciously.
“Yes, Torveld, I... I will see you later?”
The tone was pleading and soft and humble, but Erasmus still called Torveld by his name and Kallias didn't understand anything anymore. The nobleman was nodding and leaving and Erasmus did not kneel or even bow, and he was looking at Kallias the whole time.
“Come on,” he said eventually, with his soft voice. “Your knee -it's bleeding. It has to hurt.”
He realised for the first time that it was true. Where his knee had hit the stone floor, the skin was torn. He had never seen his blood running so freely and he shuddered at it, automatically taking the hand that was held out for him. He stood and felt lost.
“We'll go to the physician,” said Erasmus. “You can... lean on me, if it hurts?”
He was so soft and so innocent and so himself. Kallias had wondered so long if he had hardened or if he hated him or if he was a man now.
“Your master will be waiting”, he remarked weakly.
“Torveld doesn't mind. He would have told me,” Erasmus said and lowered his eyes, cheeks blushing a little. That is... Strange. “I'm not really needed. I just... I wanted to come see the new palace of the Kings. He really just brought me because I asked.”
None of that made sense, but he had too many questions to know which one to start with. Carefully, he put his wounded leg on the floor and whimpers softly. It hurts, or maybe it's the thought of the mark on his skin that made him feel so wrong about it. But Erasmus was there . His hand felt real in his despite all the delirium he spoke.
“I feared for you,” Kallias murmured. “I didn't know -I didn't know where they sent you.”
“I'm fine now,” said Erasmus softly. “But I wondered about you, too. We'll talk, okay?”
And they... did. After an apprentice cleaned the wound and Kallias shuddered as it was wrapped, they talked, sitting in the healing wing. They talked of slavery gone and Torveld loving Erasmus and Erasmus loving Torveld. They talked of quiet love without being bound by contract and learning to say yes and no and what he wants. They talked of being afraid and alone and the hard physical work of servants.
Kallias was given another option for his new life of freedom. He took it with no hesitation.