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As I detached myself from my family’s arms and turned to walk out of my home, I thought about those old school reports that had never failed to call mehigh-spirited, with the clear intention of delivering a warning, not to let my high spirits turn into misbehavior. My parents’ tendency to spoil me slightly had probably contributed to my low-level naughtiness, growing up, but my mother had always accompanied her mild punishments with words like, “Your free spirit is a wonderful thing, Chalondra, but you must not let it get out of hand.”
I followed the elders in silence the short distance to the village house, still thinking about it. If I truly had a free spirit, shouldn’t I be trying to run off into the woods, doing something drastic—trying to start a rebellion on Kamnos that might find someway to communicate with the Magisterians and help their effort against the empire?
Insanity,I thought, again.Lunacy and spirit are not the same thing. Doing something foolish can’t be the only way to keep some shred of freedom in the face of a system designed to turn a young woman into property.
The moment I saw the company agent, though, that rational conclusion started to waver. The center of my village, Village 17, was relatively busy at this hour. The artisans who produced genuine Kamnian products like the highly-prized aged cheese from Kamnian sheep’s milk and the even more highly prized decorative lumber that they told us no Vionian palace could do without, were taking their mid-day meal in the plaza. School-children had just emerged from the educational facility to return home for their own lunch. I could still pick out the agent, though, standing in front of the village house, as much from the mere body language of his stance as from his red uniform and his pale skin.
I wore the simple shift dress that represented traditional Kamnian women’s clothing. Kamnian men wore a tunic and loose trousers. The agent’s company uniform fit him like a glove, and he wore it in a way that suggested he could adopt a ramrod military posture if he chose, but he definitely did not so choose here on a world owned by his mighty corporation. I watched him lift his eyes in recognition as the elders led me closer, and then stroke his chin, looking me up and down with a frankly evaluating gaze that made my face go hot.
My skin was close to ivory, and my hair, according to my mother, was the perfect shade of blue. In the loose ponytail all Kamnian girls wore for school and daily chores, it flowed down to myshoulders in tight ringlets, its color vibrant against my skin’s: cyan, people usually called it.
The agent gazed into my eyes as I approached, until I had to lower them, knowing he must find them “striking,” just as I had once heard a neighbor describe them to my mother. A very light shade of green, I had always thought of them as my most characteristic feature—the expression of my spirit.
The elders stopped in front of the man in the red uniform. I stopped too, but he said, in an impatient voice whose accent seemed like the schoolbooks telling of Vionian Imperial glory come to life, “Step forward, girl. What’s your name?”
I had thought the matter of whether I meant to do anything foolish settled, inside myself. The company agent’s brusque, dismissive manner seemed to change that completely. I didn’t answer, and I didn’t step forward.
“Her name’s Chalondra, sir,” said Elder Harta. “You’ll forgive?—”
“No, elder,” the agent replied, his words clipped and harsh. “I have no need to forgive anything. Get her into the preparation room, please. Chalondra, this is your first, last, and final warning to obey me. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get out of all your clothes once the elders have left you in the preparation room. If you’re not completely nude when I arrive, things will go badly for you.”
CHAPTER 2
Chalondra
I didn’t protest as the elders, obviously miserable at having to do their duty in obedience to the company agent, led me into the village house, through a locked door, and down a flight of stairs I hadn’t known existed. There, in a nearly bare basement room most notably containing metal pillars to support the floor above, were a table, a chair, and a cage of the same dull gray steel as the pillars.
I swallowed hard. For some reason, rather than reacting immediately to the presence of the cage, I felt surprise at the metal involved in the room. Kamnos, despite being quite rich in minerals, sent those minerals to the company. We were forbidden to smelt our own metal, and forbidden to buy metal from the company, which of course controlled all our trade. Every piece of metal in my world represented a “gift” from the company: ploughshares, hammers, structural supports like the ones in this room. The rest of the village house, where I had come frequently for various important occasions in village life, contained no metal at all. Nothing marked this room as Vionianmore starkly than those metal pillars extending up from the basement’s dirt floor.
Or that horrible cage.
It looked perhaps ten centimeters taller than my 170, but it could have no other purpose than to hold a human being.
No,I thought.Not a human being really. A particular sort of object, wholly owned by the Tri-System Mercantile Company. A girl, destined for sale on Vion Prime.
Anakedgirl. Next to the cage, I noticed, stood something else I hadn’t observed when the elders had led me in. An unassuming post, made of wood, with two wooden pegs on it, one at head height and the other halfway down.
For my clothes,I understood, the heat flashing into my face.The upper one for my dress. The lower one for my underwear.
“Now, Chalondra,” said Elder Jusalon from behind me. I realized the elders, after leading me into the room, had dropped back a step.To block my escape?I wondered.
Elder Jusalon didn’t seem ready to go on. Elder Harta supplied the rest, in a firm tone that seemed to tell of having had to deliver the instruction several times before, but never without regret.
“If you go into the cage without a fuss, we’ll leave you here and you can… you know, follow the agent’s instruction… without us here. I’m sure that will make it easier for you.”
Tears sprang to my eyes. I shook my head hard, angry with myself. Without the horrible agent present, and the two kindly elders my only company, I had recovered some of my logical thinking on the matter of my fate. What else could I do? Theshred of comfort Elder Harta had just offered struck me as something to cling to.
I walked forward, past the chair and the table, which faced the cage at a distance of about a meter. It didn’t take a great deal of my intelligence to grasp the intent: the agent would descend the stairs himself. He would sit at the table, and he would…
That was where my brain’s great potential, remarked upon by practically all my teachers, deserted me. I felt my breath speed up, little pants coming through my nose and making me feel lightheaded as I chewed my lower lip.
The cage door stood open. I saw, without much surprise, that it had a metal block that matched another on the corresponding upright bar, where the door would rest when closed. A lock, surely employing some of the Vionian starfaring technology my teachers—with the exception of Mrs. Grelinqua, the Galactic Ethics teacher—had treated with the awe and reverence usually reserved for our religious rituals.
The wild idea that the gods would deliver me floated into my mind, and actually made me snort with derisive laughter despite the terrible room and the terrifying cage. Mrs. Grelinqua hadn’t gone so far as to tell us that our Vionian gods represented nothing more than a useful fiction foisted on Kamnos by the company, but the few of us whom school actually interested had easily figured that out. It had come as a relief to me, because from an early age I had wondered if I were going crazy when the various festival times rolled around. I couldn’t ever figure out why my family and our neighbors would say things like, “Great Vion be with you,” as if that meant anything at all.
Still, though I knew for certain no gods would come to my aid—least of all the Vionian gods to whom the village offered the first fruits of each harvest.
And, I suppose,my mind added of its own accord,the second fruits of their families, when requisition season arrives.
