The World of Zekira: Stock in Trade
A novel about the Rainbow People by Lethe Katherine Gray

"We've located a suitable world," said a tall man while rushing into a dim room. "You need to look at it. We're in orbit now."
Wearily, the orange-skinned commander of the scouting unit stood and ran his fingers through his unruly red-violet hair. "This had better be an improvement over the last one you found for me."
"For us," corrected the deep-blue skinned man. He had a look of tiredness about him, like his commander did, but his was a more proper, appropriate tired. He'd spent the last sixteen hours compiling information about this world they were about to scout, not sitting worrying at a love letter to someone long since over a relationship.
With a grunt, and a glare, the commander straightened his shoulders and agreed, "yes. For us," and then walked out of his private chambers.
Over the generations, the people cast off from their home world of Suul-Sat had become something new. Yet, they had no place in the galaxy. Their people, should one wish to call the world-hoarding masses that banished this group 'theirs', were not even truly space worthy when they built the exile ships. They had in theory many methods of achieving near-light speed acceleration, but for all their attempts to use an explosive device to power a ship such as they designed - most of the time the scientists were rewarded for having given the zealous leaders of their countries another new weapon which could destroy far more people and land than before.
Discouraged, but not out of the game, a large number of those very scientists had accompanied the exiled folk on their journey. All the exiles really wanted was to be accepted.
All their judges wanted was for them to remain invisible and leave every normal Suulatian alone. Those powers they had - and their wild appearance! How could any decent person ally themselves with such freaks? Yellow hair, blue skin, red eyes... Why, the idea was horrific at best.
So it was that more than twelve generations before, this ship was made in pieces circling Suul-Sat, and was eventually filled with the mess of tri-color mutants that were unwanted in every city and district.

An hour after being rudely broken from his heart-rending work, Commander Jathan knew that this was their world. What he saw on the readouts were a series of numbers: oxygen and nitrogen, land mass versus liquid water, specific gravity, orbital trajectory and wobble estimates... What he read into those results was a broad smile.
"I think we have our winner," Jathan announced to no one in particular.
He strode around the bridge of their huge ship, only one of three main command centers for the colony ship. They did not refer to themselves as exiles, these young folks - they knew their history but they'd rather forget it. And since no one else was around, they were going to make sure that it stayed forgotten.
Their new world, yet invisible to the naked eye since it was on the far side of the system from where their ship had entered orbit, would prove to be perfect for their needs.

Seventeen probes were shipped off, their data streaming in almost immediately. Two moons, neither remarkable in any way and both most likely captured asteroids. Nearly eighty percent liquid water, with small ice caps at the poles - which were nearly perfectly aligned. Tiny wobble, perhaps a five degree axial tilt. Happily, the atmosphere would be better than perfect: it was a clean, sharp version of their old world's polluted and sickly air. The four large land masses plus a lone smaller continent had clearly stopped drifting long before the planet became filled with life. There was very little apparent seismic activity, which meant that the coastlines and features of the world would be carved purely by weather conditions and time.
When two of the probes brought back information about possible local wildlife, the crew became tense. What if there were people? What if they didn't want them here?
Well, there were people there on the smallest of the continents, only. It looked like habitations and some small amount of agriculture had been started and abandoned. None on the other land masses, though there were some odd formations on one northerly area.
Animals would be present, large and small. The climate of the world seemed almost too good to be true, as well. The large storm front which was observed for several weeks while they were in orbit, drifted in a constant, steady manner. It was predicted by several computers and one odd girl who seemed to be sensitive to patterns, that this storm had been there for a very long time indeed, and would doubtless continue to shape the coasts of the lands.
And at last, after an approach of just over seventy days ship time, the group in command got their first look at their new home.
It was blue, not rust colored like their old one. It had brilliant white hazy cloud formations circling around it, not those brackish horrific acid-bearing ones that Suul-Sat offered. The lands were green and brown and had ice and snow on the mountains, the big sideways triangle shaped land clearly had a large desert on it, yet was framed by obvious habitable and arable greenery.
"The scientist who commanded the second generation of our people," said Jathan to an assembly that looked up to an image of their new world, "promised us that we'd be able to prosper. She swore that our genetics were only going to prove that we were better than our predecessors. I believe that she was correct - even these many decades later."
Jathan looked out at the crowd and saw a patchwork of color - deep green, multi-shaded peach and red, yellows and vibrant blues. These things, all mixed together, that was what their people would be. No restrictive shade laws. Never a judgement against someone who can produce light from her eyes. No child left to die because it has long ears and missing digits on their hands. Jathan could not express this in words - his ex-girlfriend knew that all too well.
"Her name was Zekira, and I propose that our new world, our new home, be named after her."
'He's finally said something right,' Amlata thought to herself - several nearby telepaths caught it, and found themselves snickering.
The cheer began carefully, the people of this exile ship were not easily swayed to anything. They were always given to deeper thought about things and would not rush. But this time, indeed, Jathan had spoken something that everyone really agreed upon. No one had given any thought to what their world would be called, and he'd gone and done it. Named it, as he wanted to name his son.
Not that he'd ever be able to sire one, but still. He knew the love and the deep commitment that he felt toward all of his people - some more than others - would extend to this planet.
He turned, looking at the static image on the screen behind him. Then, tuned back to see several hundred of the exiles happily cheering and chatting, waving their hands in the air and beginning to applaud.
Now, he'd let the experts take over, so he wouldn't have to worry about the ship arriving in one piece.

Some wise mouthed atmospheric expert said, "I want to name the long one. It looks like a -"
"Shut up, Darav," another rather more sensible ground-water scientist cut him off. "Curra," he said, labeling the long rectangular land. They were placing map labels onto things, long before even getting the okay to head to the planet. Someone had left the duties of naming the lands to a bunch of young smart asses.
"That one looks like a shoe," Darav whined.
"It looks exactly nothing like a shoe," his supervisor growled. She was pacing about, waiting for her chance to start digging. The land would remain a mystery until she actually got her hands - and her strange psionic powers - onto it.
"It does too! It looks like a shoe with those curly toes." Darav said more in passing to someone else, just to piss Edlee off.
"Shoes don't do that," she pointed out.
"They do in the story books."
"And how often do you go back to your story books, Darav? Seems that you've gotten a bit out of touch with reality."
"My story books are read to my daughter, every night before she goes to sleep," Darav smirked. He knew that this would be his winning point: he was annoying as a hornet, but he was fertile and so was his wife.
Edlee almost froze, but kept her composure. Her yellow eyes narrowed and she flicked Darav's ear. "It does not look like a shoe. What would this shoe's name be, if it looked anything like one, then?"
This, Darav gave a bit of thought to. While the other land, which was now sadly off limits to call 'log of shit', was named Curra, he was forced to go with names that sounded pretty and had some kind of basis in their language. Curra meant, in a prior and distant lifetime, something akin to forested-hill. So... Something about the big desert in the middle of this shoe-shaped land? No, that was way too obvious.
Edlee stood staring with her cat like eyes at the young man but he was entirely oblivious to her.
Finally, he decided on, "Kiran, crossed-by-tan."
"And it is, at that," Edlee sighed, letting out an unconsciously held breath.
Another of the techs who were waiting their turn to actually land on the planet said, "I claim the bumpy one - Zerin. I've always wondered what snow felt like."
"Not that fake stuff?" A brown-toned supervisor asked. "I've heard it's cold."
"Very," grinned the other. "That's why I want to see it for myself."
Edlee smirked, "well you can see it perfectly well from here. Why would you want to be that cold?"
"Because I'm soooo hot." He waved his orange-red hand before his face, and let a plume of steam come from his fingers. "See?"
"Show off," Edlee muttered. "Anyone else? What have we got for the last two?" She walked around the consoles where her team worked, looking at them as they mulled over their decisions. It was hardly frivolous work, but she supposed that the excitement of having actually located a world to colonize - a world to really live upon in gravity and weather and day and night - couldn't be held in for long.
The eldest member of the team, a stocky violet-skinned man with short cropped yellow-green hair named Pleet, spoke up. He wondered aloud why the smallest of the lands was the only previously inhabited one? "Neres, it meant 'to hunt alone'. Maybe they never reached the other lands."
"There are those odd formations on ... Curra?" Their strata-knowledgeable member said. But Pleet shook his head.
"No, I can't see how these primitives could have made those. And, it would have been several thousand years ago - longer than we have been traveling."
That made the group of seven quiet down. Ancient forces? Another, dead race? Who could say. But, they had other things on their minds than finding out right away - they were meant to be locating places for landing parties to set up the first habitation.
"Tana!" Squealed the youngest member of their team, a golden-colored psionicist with long ears and a penchant for electronics. "It meant 'green cap' and look at that beautiful run of forest on the north end?"
"But the mountain in the middle rivals this one in Zerin," said the brown skinned Felpar. "But it's not nearly as cramped in with other mountains.
Their observations were merely passing the time. They sent information to the main command team, which relayed their choices for names of the lands. Uniformly, they were accepted. Now was no time to be choosy and the names fit perfectly well.
"How goes the wake up call?" Asked Garmel the heat-ridden.
Edlee pressed a few buttons on her private console and ground her jaw around. "Well, if the reports are to be believed, the populace of pod two is completely ready - all packed up and in line. Pod one is about sixty percent, and pod three is," she aimed a mockingly angry look at Darav who came from pod three, "about twenty five percent."
Snickering again erupted among the group.
"But there are four lands we're looking at colonizing," said the elder Pleet. "How are we splitting up?"
"Looks like based on apparent arable land mass. Volunteers from the pods are heading off to each chosen spot." Edlee announced. She wanted to be doing something other than relaying what could be printed out on anyone's screens. She wanted to be hip deep in dirt.
Eventually, she'd get her chance.

The landing parties were split up at last, with a few representatives from each Pod and a handful of scientists ready to help out. Not everyone was leaving just yet. In fact, by this point, it looked as though the general consensus was that the science teams had best get a move on. The colonization was about to begin, but the people aboard the generation exile ship weren't quite ready to leave their rather advanced cushy home for ploughing fields and tending livestock all of a sudden.
Who could blame them? They'd lived for generations among the advancing sciences, well-developed medical tech, and slowly building psionic power structure. What would happen when they had to abandon that?
It was finally decided, over the course of another week in orbit, that they were to actually land the pods, eventually. That way they could scavenge or even live upon them, if need be. Now, the trick would be to place them in areas that would help rather than hinder their colonization.
The four spots chosen, one on each large land mass (they were not going to interfere with the natives just yet) were grasslands. There was clear ground water and obvious signs of life in each area. The leaders of each expedition had been chosen for not only their ability to make decisions and organize people, but for their amount of prior experience within their pod.
Professor Mada, a stunningly tall and beautifully crafted woman, led her expedition to Curra with a smile and a dash of arrogance. Engineer Lisar was a bit less ostentatious with his group heading to Tana, he being more sedate and learned, careful. Nakani, a popular leader of pod three groups, showed her big bright teeth in a smile that rivaled Mada's but her experiences in building and construction were well known as superior to her rival's. And finally Jokan, the portly dark-skinned maker of wines, would lead his largest group to Zerin.
Each equipped to handle at least ten percent of their full population load, the landing party groups would be responsible for digging in to the world and putting up the first 'Zekiran' settlements. Homes, plantations, and herding would have to be the first things expected of them. The largest group, at over twenty-three hundred people in the landing party, was to be Jokan's. He had hand picked the experts he wished to use to settle, as had the other party leaders.
It was all very organized. It was all extremely exciting to everyone.
"The Nakani party has touched down," one of the techs reading the information coming from the shuttle ships said. He could barely contain the rush of emotion in his voice. This was one step closer to stepping on real grass for the first time. Not that the ships pods didn't have grass- but he was convinced that it would somehow be better on the planet.

From what the Nakani landing party said, he was right. The ship set down, and would become part of the homestead operation on this desert-riddled land. The party was resting on the green belt north of the desert, relatively close to it in theory, but for all intents and purposes, what was past the horizon was totally unimportant to them.
Their shuttle decompressed properly on its way down from orbit, and landed with rather less fuss than anyone expected. The land was firm, no unexpected caverns below their landing point, no herds of angry predators circling them.
When the doors first opened, the groups inside were still holding their breath. But it wasn't to keep the last vestige of their old ship closer to their hearts - it was pure awe.

A gleaming object in the sky meant danger - meant anything that the chieftain's shaman wanted it to mean. And right now, he knew that his tribe was about to splinter. The people were angry with their chief, but most were loyal. Some wanted to begin a war party with the neighboring tribe because of the last rainy season's events.
So now this bright object, another star or perhaps a moon, had appeared. It was quick in the sky, and could be seen as a bright spot in the daylight as well as night. It soared overhead several times a day. Sometimes it was farther north, sometimes it would almost vanish into the day, but it was there and it didn't go away for three months.
When it fractured into four smaller but much brighter starlets, the shaman - fairly represented in other tribes in exactly the same manner as he - decided that now was the time to act. This was a portent. The tribe would split! It had to! Look at the sky and see proof of the action's correctness!
Fifteen tribes went to war against their neighbors, and two managed to lose their entire young male population to suicide. The annoyingly primitive people of Neres didn't think it would be good to ignore the portents of the skies.

When the Mada, Nakani, Jokan and Lisar parties had landed scattered across the planet, everyone on the still-orbiting ship waited for word. It would take a while, the landing parties said, to get settled. But the ship had room to grow for twelve generations or more, so with a portion of their population already away from it, they would have that much more of their resources to draw from should they need to remain in space. It was never in question that if they truly had to abandon the world, they would do so.
Soon, within another month, it became apparent that all four landing parties were having tremendous success. The only drawback was that the climate just wasn't right for some of their grain and tree seeds - they would have to rely upon more native plant life for their foodstuff. That didn't seem to bother most people. So long as they weren't going to become allergic to it, or get poisoned by random leafy greens, they decided it was well worth the risks.
After three months, the first of the colonization teams were summoned. All but gutting the ships and the insides of the pods for their goods and materials, another thirty thousand people went to each landing spot. The influx almost didn't work but wisely the landing parties split off into more groups, exploration teams who would then found their own little townships.
At long last, they began to ship down the stored surrogate cells, fetal cells from hundreds of different animal species, thousands of different individuals among each of those - when they were available. Since these animals cells had been harvested while still on Suul-Sat this was a desperation move on the part of the few remaining ecologists of the world. Most of those people came with the exiles, alongside their cell samples and high hopes for seeding a new world that wouldn't get plundered the way their last one had.
The smaller of the animals of course had been used either as food stock or pets, during the trip. No one wanted to live without a feline by their side, or a little dog to keep them company, perhaps a bird or lizard for their child. But what they really wanted was to fly upon the steeds that Suul-Sat had been known for. Tales of huge flights of the wild winged steeds still pervaded the lore of the colonists, but not one living member of their population had ever actually seen a Steed with their own eyes. Only the genetic code, and certain cells, and perhaps a preserved if long-dead subject.
Because of the low fertility rate among their people, some of the first truly advanced technologies that made it to the ground were the Breeding centers. In a ship the size of theirs, and with such an advanced rate of partial or infertility, medicine had long since worked itself into a frenzy trying to make up for it. None could imagine what their population would have been like, had they not kept their high-tech methods alive.
Next upon the ground however, were as many hardy pioneer folk as could be mustered. Even though many had been split up according to family ties, some were requested to go before the rest of their groups, to test the waters. To see if their bodies, long unused to a planet's true gravity, could withstand the rigors of building, mining or farming. Those things, everyone knew, had to be mastered before any frivolities like games and competitive flights.
While the next batches of colonists were sent, doubling the planetside population and slowly dwindling those left upon the ship, studies were still being done. The whole of the planet's surface was mapped out carefully, by satellites released at intervals during their orbit. Those same satellites were then turned to communication use, between landing parties.
It went this way for sixteen months, slowly disabling the ship and taking it apart. The pods indeed finally landed upon the planet - in huge pieces, guided down by careful hands and even some amount of powerful psionics. The pods were ungainly and terribly ugly - especially compared to the elegant structures which were planned for building at the landing spots!
Engineers and construction experts would have to wait, the gathering of raw materials had to start first. Careful mining operations, marble and stone cutters, and wood harvesting began only after a long examination of the local habitats. Which animals would be displaced? Which might be beneficial to keep on as domesticated beasts? How would their landing impact the world?
Since it was a big world, and their population so small - miniscule compared to the Suul-Sat population when they had left - they knew it would be centuries, if not millennia, before any measures against population control would have to be enacted.
That and the fact that nearly a quarter of them were infertile, they knew they would have a long while to think about it. A census indicated that just over eight hundred thousand people had actually made planet fall. That number stunned many of the people present, making them wonder just how much longer they could have gone in space with the confines of their ship.
One thing that people seemed to notice right off, was that though there were in fact animals living upon the planet, there were fewer of them than they'd really thought. The bugs were everywhere: insects of all sizes and descriptions seemed to fill niches which the exiles' textbooks and biology instructions said would be filled by birds or small mammals, or even fish. Surprised at that, but able to take it with ease, the colonists decided that if a bird wasn't available, a singing roach would have to do. But in terms of mammal or other types of life, things were a bit stranger. Certainly, on the wide plains of Tana, and the vast grasslands of Curra, there were gigantic herds of grazers, followed by their attendant packs and groups of predators. But it wasn't as if everywhere one turned, there would be a critter to see. Slightly disappointed, but glad that their impact would not be decimating any particular beasts, the colonization continued.

Though they took several years to complete, the first four Cities of the world grew up around a compact plan. Group housing which was used almost exclusively at first, became town halls and meeting chambers and Breeders clinics. Farmsteads which started their lives near the center of things soon became traffic hubs for trading goods. Since there was plentiful wood and other materials, nearly everywhere the colonists went, farmsteading or planting down roots in an isolated area was desirable so long as one could get back to town.
The owners of the Steeds became the first truly wealthy people besides the Breeders. They would hire out their animals - which were hugely successful after just a couple years due to their ability to digest almost any cellulose materials - and began taking commissions on specially trained animals or breeding them for color or size.
Each landing site City was surrounded by farmland, spotted landscapes with homesteads far and wide. Beyond those, however, were the independent homesteaders who wished nothing more than to prove their worth outside of the community. None of them were large enough to be called a City, but there were hundreds of them consisting of a few dozen people, almost everywhere across each Land.
Someone suggested they come up with zoning information: which township lay in what portion of the Land? Areas were established at haphazard borders to one another. All four lands were divided, not all that equally really, but more based upon who was where at the time, and how they felt about having their own Area.
Tana was divided into two regions: northern Imaa, and southern Difar. Zerin, six Areas known as Bohata, Ka, Stetil, Laiarta, Reimal, and the huge island Area of Zuca. Curra and Kiran both divided into three Areas, the northerly Curra split into Altem, Polaen, and Mi'a. Kiran, into Le'ret, Emosah, and Wo'ad.
The names were purely sounds - no hint of their old language needed to be used. Sometimes it was someone's name, others a word that the youngest or oldest member of the homesteading team chose. They stuck, because no one wished to challenge them.
Life on Zekira had begun.

The celebration went on unabated through three days - it had been started to commemorate the first known birth on Zekira. It continued like this because several others were promised or imminent.
"Twelve years is a long time to wait for a birth," commented one of the attendees, her yellow eyes shining brightly rather than in any manner indicating offense.
Darav smiled broadly. "Aecos is just like his good old dad," he said. "You know we're really fertile, my family."
"I can tell," Edlee sighed. She looked at Darav's half-brother, who was the father of this child. "Aaval must be very proud."
"This is his second," Darav told his ex-supervisor. Since their landing, many of the people grouped together to investigate their lands had kept in touch, but largely been broken from groups by necessity. The science officers always had new things to relate: the discovery of a new ore vein, a layer of strata indicating prior eras of plant or animal life, how snow really is butt-freezing cold in reality...
Now they had a new little member of the team. Darav's nephew would be raised proudly as a land holder - his position in society was already assured. Very nearly everyone else, however, had to work for it.
Even while in transit, the new Zekiran population had clear ideas about station and society, which translated on this new world into a complex web of land ownership and servitude. Those who could work their own land, were considered independently wealthy. Those who could offer other services, could hire workers. Those workers who incurred debts too big for them to pay off quickly, became bonded, or Bayaran, to a master who paid their debt for them. A debt so large that none could pay it, and the poor individual would become a permanent servant to the indebted party. This had been the way of things long before, while on the ship. It seemed to work well enough here, but it was becoming apparent that not everyone would fall into a neat category of "worker", "bayaran", "slave", "land holder" or "breeder". Of course, those strange people who had animal features mutated into their genes and strong psionics toward only animals would have their own sort of status, sooner or later. Everyone knew that.
Darav's introspection on land holding and the like ended when his own daughter Davali tugged on his sleeve. Her big green-laced-white eyes pleaded with him to come along. The technician bowed out of his conversation with his former team mate, and followed his daughter to a more quiet portion of the courtyard.
"Father," she stated, her voice betraying annoyance that only a 13 year old could muster, "when is this - thing - going to end? I have studies to finish!"
"Davali, this is a very important milestone!" Darav insisted. But his daughter was not to be put off.
"Father, Aecos is trying to get some sleep too, and no one lets him. What kind of ill-adjusted child will he wind up being if he doesn't get any sleep as an infant?" Said the defiant girl, setting her fists upon her hips.
Darav raised an eyebrow. "So, I'm fostering a Breeder am I? Where do you get these ideas?"
"... Maybe I will be a Breeder," Davali said. Her look of anger turned to one of deep thought. "I mean, we'd become quite wealthy if I did."
Darav laughed, "Davali, we'd have to already be wealthy to afford an education like that."
Davali didn't laugh - in fact, she scowled. "I'm not putting it out of my mind, though. What if I did become one. Would you insist on a party for every birth I assisted?"
Darav looked back at his lichen-green skinned daughter. His appraisal of her skills wasn't far off from that which his own Breeder friend had guessed. Their medical technology already proved she was fertile like her parents, and she had the slightest inclination to psionics that ran through most of the colonists. Perhaps latency to some odd power would show up later on in her life. Or, perhaps, it would erupt full fledged when she reached maturity.
Darav nodded his head, and draped his darker forest-colored arm over her shoulders, escorting her away to their private chambers.
"I might, Davali, I just might."

"He thought he'd like to be tested," said the woman whose son simply oozed power. "I mean, he's already got the look. I just have to wonder if he's also got the powers?"
Davali, interning in her fourth-year Breeding license, nodded to the pair. "Of course. I'll need to take a blood sample, if you don't mind?"
The woman was squeamish, but her son seemed eager enough to comply. He might have been eight or nine years old, certainly not even an adolescent. But he had oddly shaped ears which stood out from his head at a low angle and a light down of what would become silky fur on his skin. There was no doubt in Davali's mind that this was an animal-tuned mutation running through his genes.
She carefully removed a needle and took just enough blood to work on, dabbed at the boy's arm, and smiled at him with her youthful but well-practiced Breeder's manner. "It'll only be a few days before everything is checked out. But I can say that you're highly likely to show up positive for certain things. Let me ask you," she said, sitting down after placing the sample in a 'to-do' box, "have you noticed any affinity to certain animals, plants or types of people?"
The boy looked at his mother, who nodded. "Yes," he said quietly. "The flattail rats, we had a family of them living in the swamp near our homestead, and when they would come near, I... I guess I could hear them. Not like," he fingered his pointed ear, "with my ears. But hear them, like they were talking in my head. When they were hungry, the kits would get really loud - so I started feeding them. And when the parents were afraid, I told them not to be, and they stayed."
Davali nodded sagely and gave the boy a more personal, confident smile. "I'm almost positive, like I said. There will certainly be good work for you in the beast trade. It's called Tuning. Some people are tuned to ... oh, electric things. Some, to animals or birds, and others to natural phenomenon like storms or plants. But we all know the money's in animals."
The boy laughed, half nervous but clearly pleased. His mother looked about to burst with pride.
As they left the office, and Davali began to work on his blood sample, she knew that this had always been her own tuning. The way that she had with people was a side effect - her forte was biology and moods. Did her father know that she was a psionic? Probably not. But then, there were others in their family who had strong abilities. Why not her? Now, if only she could put into words the things she felt whenever she saw a mutant or a latent psionic?
Some day, she would. Some day, in fact, her words would become the basis for the entire world's mutation listing.

"Is he the one?" Davali's Bayaran secretary and friend Nesmina asked. Davali nodded, eyes affixed firmly on a slender, long limbed black-skinned man. He was a part time racer, started off and kept his career on steedback as a courier, and he was at the top of Davali's "to mate" list.
She'd waited nearly all her fifty years for this moment: when Jakran would come into contact with her bond. All she needed to do, Davali instructed, was hand off a business card with her information and a simple request on it. What happened then would be entirely up to him.
Now, as he dropped to the ground outside her clinic from his orange-white steed, Davali licked her lips and wondered. Would he take her up on it? She knew that he was at least partially fertile, from his Status records. Such private things were quite easy to get hold of, when one's Status read Breeder/Membayar. Davali peered out from her office window, and saw Nesmina greet him.
She wanted to do it herself. But, she had tons of work and would probably screw it up. Her bedside manner was well known, among parents and children - but her personal desires would surely get in the way of her tongue's behavior if she had to ask him herself.
It wasn't like a date, though. It wasn't at all like finding a partner for a long term commitment. This was a Breeder's thing. She'd looked him over and decided that not only were his skin and hair just the right shade of dark to bring her own features back into the visible spectrum (she'd always thought her pale coloration was boring - not like this vibrantly black-skinned wonder outside), but he was healthy, could provide care or a home if need be, and his latency rating was quite high. Combined with her own, she wondered but couldn't quite place what the results would be.
That, too, would wait until much later.
For the moment, she saw Nesmina hand off the card and tilt he head waiting for a response. Jakran looked at the card, away, then at Nesmina to ask a question, she answered, and then he looked directly at the window where Davali was standing. He ought not to have seen her standing there, since it was a shaded affair that offered privacy from the outside world but a view of it from ...
He could see her, yet. His smile said that he'd be amenable to this offer. She didn't even have to ask when Nesmina came back into the office with his formal response.

There was something so deeply fulfilling, Davali decided, about having one's choice of mate turn out to be more perfect than she'd imagined. Jakran and she had met several times for formality's sake, signing and agreeing to paperwork which made their union at present an officially "for offspring only" one. But she knew. Davali saw something in Jakran's violet-blue eyes that she liked. Intelligence, poise, perhaps even a touch of cruelty. Why she was drawn to all those things and not just the first two was beyond her. But, there they were. And she would have him.
Davali's father would certainly disapprove. He was still happy that she was able to complete all her Breeder education with flair and two years to spare, but he was never quite comfortable with what that status really meant. She wasn't one of those plain healers - ones you take your sick or injured to. She was that and much more. A full Breeding degree allowed her to locate and pair off couples for the purpose of producing another child for the world of Zekira.
He didn't give much thought to the fact that Davali wanted to do this for herself, not just for other people. He considered it improper to mate outside of marriage.
Such a typical Membayar at heart, he was. A good land holder, of course, and a good father. He ran a business based on what he knew best: atmosphere. Several local information video and transmission senders would request his take on where the storm was, how best to dress for the day tomorrow, and generally, he'd predict the weather. To a strong extent, he was right.
What he wasn't right about was that his daughter would come to her senses any time soon about this breeding project she'd launched herself into. The lad was barely old enough to hold land, let alone ...
Davali smirked when Jakran came to her homestead with a basket full of fresh flowers and a wrapped freshly baked loaf of bread.
"The best bakery in Mada said this was the right flavor for an, um, romantic evening," Jakran said. He made a pretense of seeming bashful - Davali knew better. He had the stately presence of a winning steed jockey, known locally as a daring rider. He'd come either on foot or escorted in a carriage, because his transportation steed wasn't in sight. That was a good thing, as Davali hardly had the facilities to take care of them.
"I would say that by the smell, it's a wonderful choice." Davali said at last, taking the flowers from his hands and letting their scent fill her nose. It wasn't part of their formal agreement, that he do these things. But it made everything work so much more smoothly that he had. Davali was still a bit nervous and self conscious - her! She held the basket, an open scoop with a handle filled to the brim with fresh-cut bright-eye blooms surrounded by a spray of red crackle-leaf.
Davali selected a wine which had been made locally - she didn't see the point in asking to import any from Jokan. That night was spent with flirtatious speech and sly looks, and ended with a hesitating but well-crafted lovemaking.

"I'd no idea it would take this long for us," Davali said, cradling their son Djeck. He was unusually mutated, something that Davali couldn't have predicted since it had never occurred on the colony ship. Djeck was quite dark green in skin, with vibrant green-teal hair (a full head of it, too), and what would probably become violet-to-lavender eyes. His chubby face made everyone smile.
Davali knew that when she showed her aging father this grandson of his, he would be a bit shocked to see the four arms.
What wouldn't shock him, though, because he'd blossomed into full weatherhaping powers over the last decade, was that Djeck could already use his powers of telepathy to summon his mother or father from wherever they were. They usually spent little time away from him, but if he was in need he could put out a piercing mental cry. Rather like he did not do when he cried aloud. He was so sweetly quiet with his voice, that most people thought he was quite the sedate little thing.
Ha. What they didn't know wouldn't hurt them. Skies forbid a telepath or empath wander by!
Not knowing quite what to make of this, though, Davali made certain that the elder Breeders of Mada could study her son. She was curious: why the arms? And did they have some intimate connection with his power level? The general consensus was that yes, his power was off the chart so far as anyone could determine. But his arms? Well, they were a mere physical mutation and nothing more.
Perhaps a bit of an annoyance, since they'd have to have tailored clothing specific to him all his life.
Not that Davali couldn't afford it. Certainly not now after nearly six years of trying - when she and Jakran would become married soon. He only got better and better at his jockey work - and had an eye for selecting the right steeds to fly. He owned several by the time they decided to marry, and even Davali had gotten used to the big winged beasts. She'd had a bit of fear around them, never really comfortable, but she loved to watch Jakran race so she put up with them up close too.

With the winning bet, Djeck smiled at his father and waved to his mother down below. He could wave to both of them separately. He still reveled in that, apparently, and also loved having people look at him. How unlike anyone before him, this four armed creation. His telepathy grew stronger every year of his life, 'til this point, and would only get stronger with practice.
He could easily locate other telepaths or others who sported psionic powers, in any crowd. In fact, he loved doing that. He loved it so much that he'd told his mother - and she hired him to do it for her.
"We want stronger psionics, like yours," she would say, So she sent him out at races like this, to play spot-the-breeding-fodder.
Having been raised in a family of sharply psionic people himself, Djeck soon realized that he would be cut out best for the Breeding life: he had the eye, he had the experience as well.
He lacked the drive to attend all those dreary classes. But, his mother insisted that if he were to be part of her staff at the clinic, he'd learn. But he was so good at betting! That of course led to his wealth outside of his inheritance from both sides of his family, he'd earned his own.
And wanted to spend it on things other than a Breeder's license, but that was what would make both mother and father happy - so he did.
Djeck took longer than his mother to pass his Breeding exams. His heart was in the subject, just not the books! He knew most things inside and out before he even opened a file, before he took one look at a patient. Djeck had been raised as intimately aware of his human patients as his animal ones - his father kept seven Steeds at the main house, one of whom was specially made for Djeck.
After the trophy ceremony, which went on a lot longer than anyone really wanted it to, Djeck met up with Davali and Jakran near the Steed boarding area.
"Are you ever going to surprise anyone?" Djeck asked his father. Jakran smiled, his crafted and pleasing face showing all the pride that any winning jockey ought to.
"No, if you mean by losing."
They laughed. At twenty nine years of age, one might have expected Djeck to be more distant from his parents - but they were quite the opposite. Many wealthy land holders looked upon them jealously - Davali had born two more children since Djeck's birth as well, and cared for them with the same intensity that she had afforded her first born. Djeck was adept at keeping young children occupied, and so he remained near his younger siblings.
"Did you find anyone here?" Davali asked, raising her sea-blue eyebrow way up. She gazed at the crowd and then turned back to her son.
"I did, but they were pretty far away from me. I didn't get a card to them. I'm sorry." Djeck admitted. While he wasn't all that disappointed really, his mother was, but she also didn't chide him for it. After all, he'd only be paid if he got someone to show up to the clinic for testing.

The pulse of the music was hypnotizing, and the press of bodies against one another thrilled Djeck. Here was a place where he could do every job he wanted all at once: a dance club that serviced the most cutting edge of Bred folk, they were edging out the normal folks slowly but surely. Everyone knew him: he was that four-armed guy who could send his thoughts almost halfway across the Area without tiring.
And everyone wanted to know him better. He remained aloof, his father's genes almost seemed to make him do so without difficulty. That only made many people want him more. In his ninety-five years, he'd never looked older than forty, and kept his age a secret to those he knew were merely half or a third of his age. It was something easy to do, and no so damaging a secret that anyone could fault him for it.
Smiling at his friends, and smirking at his few enemies, Djeck danced his way from one side of the building to the other. Touching minds as much as flesh - he spotted three of his closest friends without any difficulty, but he knew they were all the way across the room and somewhat busy with their partners for the evening. He didn't bother them.
There were other people to bother, and he did so with a grin.
"Hallam, how are you?" He asked of a dusky grey-brown colored man. That man glanced up at the much taller Djeck, then back at his drink.
"Go away," Hallam muttered. "I'm in no mood for you. Mood for a fight."
"A mood for drinking is always a fighting mood with you, Hallam, did you want to talk?" Djeck asked - he was honestly asking one of his betting-enemies, one of the guys he'd actually Bonded briefly, if he wanted to have a heart to heart? Was he nuts?
Apparently he was. Hallam sensed this as well. But the drunken man merely stared at his drink and didn't even bother lifting his hand to it. It was then that Djeck saw the circle-within-circle pin newly creasing the lapel of his shirt.
"You're Bayaran again?" Djeck asked, as if it was the slightest bit of his business, and to his surprise Hallam nodded. "What is it this time?"
"It was a Steed, what else would it have been?" Hallam spat, eyes narrow. But he looked at Djeck and didn't see any of the old rivalry. Only a concern that went as deep as any a Breeder could muster. "Ahh, what would you know. You've never lost a bet in your life."
"Don't bet on that one, either," Djeck said, sitting down next to him. "Look, who's your debt to? I can arrange a transfer if you want. If it's someone you don't want to work for."
"Now there's an understatement," Hallam groaned. "Do you know Mistress Eyal?"
The name rang a vague bell with Djeck, but he couldn't quite place it.
"Runs the Steed harness job down in the grassland park," Hallam said. "I ... I guess you can't say it was a betting error on my part this time," to that he raised his glass and took a long swig of the contents. "I managed to spook this damnable Steed of hers off the road and crushed its harness and buggy. It's more than two years pay on what my job used to be."
"... Used to be. Oh, Hallam, what'd..."
"It wasn't my fault this time... They decided to move the waxworks down to the plains." Hallam said. "I couldn't go, I think they took only the damn Holders with them anyway. It was like they wanted to get rid of us Workers."
Djeck didn't say anything about the wax works being closer to the bees. Instead, he draped his upper arm around the man's shoulder and placed the lower around his hip. "Eyal will take whose ever money is thrown at her. Do you want me to write it up?"
Hesitating, but turning with a drunk eye at Djeck, Hallam said, "First I want you t' take that arm o'yours off me like I'm your girl," he took a long drink, finishing the last of what he had and clearly he could pay for no more this night, "second, yeah, if you've got a job I can do. I don't wanna be workin' off in some clinic or around no Steeds."
"The first is easy enough," Djeck laughed, removing his hands and clasping them behind his back, "the second... have you ever done any homestead construction?"
Hallam nodded, "I've done lots of it. I work with casting things - wax, metal, it's all the same once it's hot, really."
"Then I think I have a place for you to work on, if you're good for it."
Djeck's northerly homestead, a big rambling wooded landscape with rocks and a waterfall and ... well, all that would certainly look better if it had a wrought iron gate at the front. And a fence around the perimeter. And perhaps, some filigree here and there...

Djeck wanted to know what to do with the Slaves. Always uncomfortable in terms of buying and selling them (Hard Stock law was one of his poorest subjects when he was still in school and it had never gotten any easier for him), he wished they'd just manage to ... well, manage themselves. It wasn't like the Bonder laws, which he was quite good at. He knew how to move money from one person to the next. Just, when it got to be more money than the person could actually make in the rest of their lifetime, he became a bit uncomfortable.
While his father still lived, Djeck let him take all the care of the Slaves. But now that both his parents had grown old and died, and he was their eldest, he was the one to execute their estate. He looked around with displeasure. Not because of the people he saw, but because he was the one having to do all this annoying paperwork. He was much better with people than paper.
He looked out and saw the aged Hallam, his own Slave by many years. Yes, he'd gotten into trouble again and again, and simply put he was happier when he didn't have to worry about money. He put his life in Djeck's hands, and was nearby because this was the homestead he'd helped to build. He lived here in the sunset of his days, and Djeck knew he wouldn't mind being buried here when the time came.
Djeck looked over his own children, Naadja and Khadja - both girls, and both with their own daughters attending. They were his pride and his joy, in that order: Naadja took after him in all ways save his arms, she was a well-placed Breeder among their peers, and was expected to follow her grandmother's example of extending the knowledge of these new genes their generation was starting to show. She'd learned so well that Djeck had to seek out other instructors to keep her occupied. Kaadja took after her mother Naakha, who was a beast-tuned psionicist with semi-feline features to her. Naakha didn't much care for Steeds, but she did enjoy every other aspect of animals from their environments to their uses in the field.
Naadja's young daughter Jeed was casually interested in Breeding, but had all the powers and effects of one already. Though she had never met Davali she looked quite like her, and carried a similar power to perceive the general health and welfare, emotions and state of a patient long before even asking their name. Khadja and her husband land Holder Milfee had a little powerhouse of activity on their hands in the shape of Mafek - the girl didn't sit still for more than half an hour unless there was an animal in front of her, and particularly if it was a bug. Young, too young to really inherit yet, she and her cousin were led out with some of the other children to wait it out.
He saw his extended family: sister Kraval and brother Valji, Kraval's young child Rallof and Valji's pair of Laila and Jarl. His cousins and such, and some people whom his parents had gotten used to having around in their age. All of them looked to him. He played with his lower arms' hands below the big dark desk that had been his mother's way back when.
With his upper arms, though, he shuffled the paperwork around until he was satisfied. "I'm meant to break up the possessions and stock as best I can," he announced at last. "So I guess this means I have to start asking who can and cannot legally Own, and who would be most comfortable with which properties."
The bickering went on for a little while, but not nearly so long as other families he'd heard of. And this was a blessing, because their family was quite large as far as Zekirans went. Most might have a wife and a mistress and if they were very lucky a child or grandchild to attend. Finally it was settled that along with Khadja's, Valji's family would inherit the Steed farm and several spare animals here and there, while Kraval's side would mostly maintain the clinic with Djeck and Naadja. Kraval took strongly after their mother, but with her six year old Rallof to tend to, she would be waiting to take over any real duties for a bit.
Djeck was humbly willing to take only what he thought was appropriate, portions of a homestead and land, as well as controlling interest in the clinics that his mother had established in several small villages across Curra. Others would get money, items, pets, Steeds here and there, the Slaves mostly went to Djeck and Kraval, since they had the most money and best uses for having permanent servants ... And pretty much everyone went home happy.
Hallam remained to help clean up the rooms that the mass of people had mussed up. Chairs everywhere, drinks and food of course had been served, and the bored children had had to be sequestered into a room where they weren't bothered by the droning of legalese. Hallam had never sired a child, but with working in a Breeder's home he almost felt like he had some times.
"It's hard to believe that father of yours is finally out of the betting pool," Hallam said. "Maybe now it's safe for me to become a Worker again."
Djeck laughed and laughed...

Mafek didn't understand why her mother kept taking her away from the farm. She was a grown young lady, all of seventeen, and didn't like being told what to do or where to do it.
She especially didn't like being told that she couldn't see that nice red-skinned farm hand as often as she wanted. He was so ... well, strong and muscular, with limbs taut and a sheen of sweat over his skin. The way he talked to her told her he was much smarter than his Owners thought he was. As a Slave, of course, he would never be allowed to come visit her - but since Mafek had the family's money on her hands...
Mafek grumbled in the carriage on the way back to their own farm. "I don't see what's the problem. He's a nice man. It's not like he's trying to sully me or make you buy him or anything."
Khadja looked away, "well, at least you acknowledge that he's a Slave, Mafek."
"Is that what this is about? I thought you were better than that," Mafek snarled. She very nearly jumped from the carriage onto the road right then. She had the good sense in her head not to do so.
"... I thought I was too, but Mafek you must understand. We've enough Slaves to go around, and he would have nothing to do. I cannot arrange a breeding pair with him, his Owner isn't willing to do that."
"How do you know, you've asked her?!" Mafek erupted, and almost stood in her seat. "You're discussing my personal-"
"We discussed the fact that you quite like him, and he seems rather taken with you as well. But it would just not be practical to allow anything further." Khadja said, placing her arms across her chest in a manner which indicated she was done speaking about this.
Mafek fumed, not daring to look back to her mother, lest she say something nasty. Instead she glared outside at the landscape. Home toward Mada was always so boring, she thought. She filled her mind with images of her 'lover', Dest. He wasn't that much older than she, perhaps in his thirties if that. And considering the length of lifespan she knew she'd have, she could wait. She wasn't all that sure about him.
There had to be a way to send him a private message. She so wanted to find out what he thought they should do. He seemed so wise, and so genuine in his words. She didn't want to just vanish on him, that was certain. But how? Perhaps cousin Rallof could arrange something. He was quite good in his field, harkening back to their grandsire (and great-grandsire in Mafek's case) Jakran in his courier work. He had no intention of becoming a jockey, however, he liked cycles and airlift jets just as much as Steeds.
But could he send a private message to a Slave, that was the question...

"Why would you do this? For me? This is crazy!" Dest said, over the engine's noise. Eight years after her fateful decision, Mafek managed to convince her cousin Rallof that she needed a vehicle capable of ... well, stealing a Slave. He knew that his younger cousin was crazy, but she was also crazy in love with this Dest. What was best was that he apparently thought the same for her - and that was the only reason he agreed to help. He'd be standing before the same judge when they were caught, of course, but they could blame it all on Mafek's young idealism and all that rubbish.
Besides, it was great fun.
Dest clung on to Mafek's slender waist, refraining from screaming his head off. Mafek was grinning ear to ear, wearing a pair of Rallof's goggles that bunched her golden-green hair up all funny.
When they finally arrived at a location that Mafek had secretly bought, Rallof bid them a hasty farewell. "I've got to make sure I'm at Spim village in two hours - it's my alibi. I don't know what yours will be but," he grinned at his little cousin and her surprised friend, "good luck!"
They watched him leave on his little jumper jet, a tiny two-person platform with hoverjets and a windscreen and barely anything else on it (hence why Dest was so terrified, being the third person on a craft designed for only two...). He vanished into the distance, and would make Spim in no time. No one knew that he'd stuck a Steed out near Spim so he could have "flown" in on one. He had left Mada on his black one, found his cousin waiting with the jumper jet, headed off to steal a Slave, then would retrieve another Steed to haul the jet back later on. It was all very complex. Maybe it would make the history books or even a vid some day.
Or, maybe, Dest and Mafek would live their lives out in solitude and peace?
Probably not, Rallof thought as he zipped away. But it was worth the try.
Mafek hugged her friend and told him, "I've saved enough money if it comes down to buying you off of that witch," and she noticed how much more snugly he held her after that.
"But this place? It's ... nice, but it's in the middle of nowhere."
Dest looked around them. The locale was just south of the major forest that covered the foothills of Polaen. East of Mada by perhaps two hundred miles, northeast of Spim by another six hundred. The area was well hidden, with a canopy of tall dark trees but a good dappling of sunlight lay splayed over the ground below. A temporary shelter had been brought in, but it was clear to Dest that Mafek intended them to actually build a homestead there.
"I ... notice that you didn't provide yourself with a vehicle to leave here," Dest announced after a moment of examination. "Did you bring tools, then?"
At that, Mafek skipped happily to a smaller shed, and on opening it Dest saw a variety of blades, hammers, chisels, levels... pretty much everything he'd be needing. He had built walls before - a porch for his Lady Owner, and some smaller projects. Now, would be his true test.
Mafek somehow lured animals to their shelter, small ones, which they cooked over an open fire, and might possibly use to trade their furs in a village some distance away.

"Mama! Mama!" Bawled a tiny child to Mafek. Blearily, the young woman hugged her daughter to her side.
"What is it Steffa?" Mafek grumbled.
"The big rats in my dream again... They were really close and they smelled bad and there was a man with them."
Mafek sat bolt upright in her bed, jostling Dest but he was a sound sleeper.
"Steffa sweet heart, tell me just what you saw. Quietly." Mafek said, that was their cue to go onto a private telepathic link so they wouldn't bother Dest. Steffa had always been prone to having visions, dreams which would become reality, and she was quite well tuned to the animals of this northern forest - Hern rats being one of them. Those were the type in her dream.
This was no dream. There were always people out looking for escaped Slaves like Dest. Panic gripped Mafek's heart and she held on to Steffa in a fierce hug. "Steffa, do you see the sun in your dream? Where is it?"
Steffa paused, and though she was but four years old she could sort out her own thoughts quite well. "That way," she pointed, west.
Then from Mada the danger would come. It was time to wake Dest, and tell him that perhaps that little nook up in the hills was a better place for their homestead after all. He'd wanted to move to a more secluded area before, even though they had already selected another spot to build their first real home. The area where the temporary shelter had been assembled was too small for a proper house to go up.
When Dest had been told of this news, his broad shoulders slumped. "It's going to be hard work, winter is coming on quickly this year." He got himself out of their warm bed and stretched. Mafek had never lost her fascination with him - he was so handsome and sweet and smart... She hoped that she hadn't disappointed him in any way. After all she'd chosen this life for them, not really giving him a choice at all. When he'd dressed and gathered up his tools to start working on that cavern-home, Steffa came to her mother.
"Why are you so sad, mama? Daddy's making a new house for us!" Steffa seemed so pleased to have this new place, but she still didn't quite understand the theory behind why Dest - and her mother, for that matter - were wanted by men with hern rats.

Eight years and three homes later, the law finally caught up with Dest and Mafek. Their second child, a boy they named Ked, had barely begun to walk when the snarling, baying sounds of the Hern rat patrol came from the canyon below.
"We know you're there. You must come peaceably or else we'll send the rats after you." Called a burly man - fit for tending an entire family of the huge waist-high rodents.
In the house, which was effectively sheltered from view below by the canyon wall's edge, and from above by another higher one, Mafek hugged her tiny son to her chest, while Steffa clung on to her skirt. Dest appeared with a grim face, but a calm had taken him long before. He'd been resigned to this some day. His greater worry was that he would never be allowed to see his children again.
Imagine that. Two children - young and strong, powerful and clearly smart. And his - a slave's children. Meaning only one thing to Dest. That some day, those children and he would surely be parted whether he had a say in it or not. Mafek trembled when he placed his sturdy red hand on her shoulder.
Their daughter's woodsy-red-brown skin contrasted beautifully with her brilliant orange-yellow hair, her huge red-framed yellow eyes looked so slightly catlike. Her grandmother's mutation, apparently. Ked was a softer shade of brown-green, and his eyes would change color in the sunlight - he so loved being out and about. But not right now. He was restless, but his innate empathy had already caught on that this was a dire situation indeed.
"We should go." Dest picked up a coarsely woven blanket that Ked slept most of his life in, and wrapped it about the boy as a cloak. He then looked about for something - anything - that Steffa had to bring with her.
A wooden toy - he knew that she hadn't played with it in a long while, but it hadn't broken in the years she had enjoyed it. She took it with her eyes cast downward, but he picked up her chin. "It's a new adventure. And think of this, Steffa, your powers are strong. You let us know so many times - we'd have been caught years before now if not for you."
She nodded, and they exited the rocky homestead.
When they'd descended the steep path down to the canyon floor, where the group of Hern rats and their tenders, as well as three other people waited, Steffa took one look at the man and simply started screaming and screaming...
Shaken, suddenly, the man had to control the rats with a tug of their short leashes. "What's got into that girl?" He asked, worried. "What's wrong with her?"
Mafek barely shielded herself and her son from Steffa's wild psionic sendings. "It's you!" She yelled, "you've plagued her dreams for a decade or more, and now here you are in the flesh!"
Steffa gripped her father's shoulders as he picked her up, she was still wailing. Her eyes were wedged shut and tears streamed down her dark face. Dest tried to calm her, but his own powers weren't nearly enough to combat this trauma.
Two of the other people nearby were all but strangers to Mafek, but Dest knew them all too well. His Lady Owner Szhe, and her head Slave Faranat. The third member of the team, Khadja.
Her stern eyes drifted over the group, wincing a bit at the sharp cries of the child.
Mafek knew that something - something bad - had to have made her this way. She never knew her mother to be so stern or angry looking. Perhaps it was just her running away with Dest. But more likely it was something else entirely.
Her mother's mind was sealed - her own telepathic power had strengthened over the years they'd been apart.
"Come along, Mafek. Slave Dest, you're going back with them. I consider this fiasco over." Khadja said flatly.
Mafek's heart skipped. "Mother - you-"
"Over," Khadja spat again, and turned. There was a hover vehicle nearby, a quiet one which none of the family members had heard come up over the canyon ridge. It was fit for several people, and another one lay a little farther away, the one which held the Hern rats and keeper.
"The children are mine," claimed Szhe, sharply. "Come. You're far too old to be crying like that, and you'll need to be trained for your work."
She demanded that Steffa be handed off to her. And though he was afraid for his life, Dest stood firmly.
"You'll not have my children. They were born Holders, and Holders they shall stay. Mafek?"
Though she was small by comparison to her partner, Mafek could still hold on to the year-old Ked on one shoulder, and take their daughter onto her other arm.
"Mafek! Give the children to their Owner. Now." Khadja said. Her voice was a warning growl, her catlike eyes narrowed and sharp.
Mafek turned. Slowly, she turned a look of outright surprise and fear into one of pure anger.
"How dare you insist any such thing?! My children are not to be bartered!"
"They already have been, miss," said the tall, overly muscled Faranat. "Now come hand them here."
Her anger turned on this Slave and manifested suddenly as a wall of painful psionic energy. He reeled, moving back a few steps and holding his hands to his head.
"You stay away from my babies!" She shrieked. By this time, Steffa's wailing had toned down to a constant whimpering, but had never stopped entirely. They were cut silent by this event.
Khadja moved forward, apparently immune to her daughter's wrathful broadcast. "Mafek, you've been found guilty of Hard Stock theft. Harboring a renegade Slave, and several other charges already. You're going to add assault to a superior Status to that?"
"He's superior to me? In what way?!" Demanded the young woman.
"... Mafek, you're ..." Khadja started, but her exterior of smooth dominance started to waver. "You are considered a rogue - less than a renegade in any courtroom. Anything they do with you now is legal. Do you understand? Lady Szhe will take care of the children as a trade for your life. That's the only option."
"I have enough money to pay for-"
"No, you do not," Szhe spat. "Not nearly enough. Not even with thirteen years worth of interest added. Do you know how much it cost me to have Dest engineered? Your simple Breeder aunt never explained it to you?" Her tone was insulting enough, but the words even stung Khadja. She didn't let it show. "Dest is the result of decades of selection. And you took him from me just before I was going to be starting a project which would utilize the very features he had been bred for. In case you hadn't noticed, he's able to work any kind of land imaginable. Rocks, grassland, trees, dirt. He's a terraformer, you dolt! You cannot imagine how much more you'd have to pay to buy him!"
Mafek's eyes widened, hurt and amazed at this all. Dest tried to go to her side to comfort her, but Faranat got in his way. One look of warning, admittedly a red-eyed one from Mafek's attack, but one look and he backed away. He'd been struck many times by those powerful hands, even though it was more than a decade before he remembered clearly.
"Give them up, or they'll..." The Hern rat master started out gruffly, but couldn't finish his statement.
"Mafek, if you come with me right now, and give the children to Lady Szhe, you'll probably be given only a lighter sentence because of the children." Explained her mother. She'd obviously been over this time and again in her mind or even with lawyers. "But... They're authorized to hunt you down, Mafek," she indicated the Rat master.
"No!" Interjected Dest, "No - you can't do that!"
A glaring grey eye from his Lady almost shut him up, but Dest was ready to defend his mate properly.
"Mafek," he said, "there's always time later. Do what they ask now. I can't bear the thought of you -" He couldn't even finish the statement.
"Being eaten alive by Hern rats?" Szhe did it for him. "It's far more than she deserves. Get in the hovervan, Slave. Now. Take the children with you, or I'll allow them to be eaten as well. They are after all, my property to be dealt with as I see fit."
She turned, and held her hand up in an 'I'm waiting' gesture. Faranat took that as his cue to brave Mafek's mental burn again, which sadly she couldn't quite muster this time. Ked was handed off to his father, so he didn't much make a peep.

"Why is that girl always so quiet?" Asked one of the Bayaran of Steffa. Another shrugged and kept shoveling.
Steffa stared directly ahead as she did her work, mechanically. She held up a stone to the light, saw that it was of the right smoothness to use in a homestead, and placed it on the cart with others just like it. This back-breaking work was far too hard for most Slaves her age, but no one questioned Szhe's decision. If anything, they commended her - because it gave the girl a chance to at least be in the same camp as her father.
Ked wasn't so lucky. Since he was so young when he was Slaved, he was to be raised with a foster mother like the others among Szhe's broods, and educated to his Station. He would never know his family, nor how to use his powerful psionics. Not if Szhe had anything to say about it.
Another big rock, perhaps a little too shiny in places, was put on the cart. Steffa didn't complain that her back hurt. She never said anything about her bloody hands. Her shoulders were tired, achy. They never stopped bunching up, even when she was resting or asleep. Her catlike eyes remained focused on the stones she picked up. Her lips were sorely dry, and she would work herself to death if it weren't for the kindness of one of the older Bayaran tending the workers.
"You've got to stop this, Steffa," he said, holding out a cup with fresh water in it. She took it with the same mechanical action that her work used, and said nothing in return. When their shifts were over, she sat in the shade next to the other exhausted Slaves. They would be brought into their temporary housing when everyone else was done out there.
Other Slaves and Bayaran would mend their clothing, tell stories, or quietly gripe about their situation in this time. Some tended their wounds, yet others lay staring at the sky wishing and wanting.
Everyone knew where Steffa had come from. Everyone had tried to ask her things about the free life. Not one had ever gotten a response. The fourteen year old girl withdrew even from her father's conversations. Hardly a day went by that he did not try to converse with her, get her to talk or open up, or even act like his daughter. She simply did not respond.
Some Bayaran would taunt her and insult her, calling her stupid or slow, but those who had been there a year before when she came on with her father would silence them quickly enough.
But not even Dest would talk about Mafek. She had not been allowed to come with them, as a Slave herself - Szhe insisted that she be tried as a criminal and she wanted nothing to do with criminals. She of course never said what the outcome of that trial was. Information like that was kept from her Slaves, naturally. It wasn't their place to worry about such things.

"He didn't mean to! It was an accident!" Cried a Bayaran of his brother. "She never says anything! He didn't know she'd care!"
Though he was growing a bit past his prime for the job, Faranat was still Lady Szhe's enforcer, still well-muscled and sleek, and looked upon the Bayaran who'd raped Steffa. His gruff voice carried in the barracks. "Did not mean to take the girl by force? Excuse me but last I heard, one's meant to ask before doing any such things, and getting a response is rather important don't you think?"
Other people muttered, 'didn't think she'd mind?' 'he'd always been randy.' 'served the girl right for not protesting.' and 'if it was me, I'd have slugged him good.'. Faranat glanced around, and the various Slaves and Bayaran silenced themselves.
"She hasn't deserved any of this," he announced, "and I'd consider your brother to be permanently bonded, boy. This kind of thing isn't looked upon well by our Lady."
The brother of the offending man stood in complete sickened silence. They'd been bonded because their deadbeat of a mother had blown everything they owned on a losing Steed, and then gone out and killed herself. Leaving them with the bill - and now this?
But Faranat was already outside with Steffa in his arms being carried out to the infirmary. He wouldn't hear any protests or complaints, he was clearly on the 'girl's' side. The girl in question was now a middle aged woman - and had never said more than one or two words in the entire time she was Szhe's Slave.
"Caught him in the act, I did," he told the healer present. "Felt compelled to head to the barracks."
Faranat told him how he'd been walking by the new paved road and felt something tingling, just the edge of something amiss. Headed toward the barracks, and caught the Bayaran named Xemai as he was pinning Steffa to her cot and in the act of forcing her to comply with his sexual desires. He'd immediately broken the younger man off her, passing him off to several concerned Slaves nearby, who took him off to another area for the time being.
"Well it was a good thing you did, then," the Breeder said, nodding. "Lucky for the girl."
"I knew he was going to do it," said a hoarse voice - clearly female, and clearly Steffa's. "So I told you to come. I needed you to help me, and you came."
While the healer stood in confounded silence, Faranat seemed a bit more knowledgeable about it, and sat down next to her.
"This is the most I've ever heard you speak, Steffa," he said. "I knew you were a foreteller - your father spoke highly of your abilities, that's why you weren't discovered until later. But... Why didn't you try to avoid it, if you could see it?"
Steffa's red-lined yellow eyes met his, the first genuine contact they'd had in decades. "My power only tells me what will happen, not how to try avoiding it. I'd seen you, when I was little. And that bitch Szhe," though she did not pause, the healer and Slave both took in sharp breaths, "and the stone grounds. I've only ever seen things that really wind up happening. There was no point in trying to change it. I could not if I tried."
"Now that's kind of -" The healer began to say something idiotic, and Faranat stopped him.
"Even if she had protested, you think he'd have stopped? I think not." Faranat said, grimly, to the healer. He turned back to Steffa. "You'll stay here for a while. We'll take care of Xemai, and I'll recommend that he not be kept here. Perhaps not with female Slaves at all."
Steffa nodded, then went a bit more vacant as she usually appeared. Faranat told the healer he'd stay up with her, if the Breeder had places to be. He watched Steffa's eyes cloud over as if in deep memory - but more likely they were merely hiding the pain she was in.
She'd been through a lot. In her fifty five years as a Slave she'd seen many things. Her brother Ked sold off and never seen again. Her father literally worked to death changing the rocky soil into rich brown arable dirt. If her mother was still alive, who knew? Surely Steffa would know, Faranat had a feeling that the young woman would just ... change, if that happened. She never spoke, not even to acknowledge Lady Szhe's instructions. At first, Szhe would punish her for not responding, but then simply realized that the girl was hardly protesting - she was doing her work and didn't say anything because she was trying to drown out reality.
Perhaps her reality was far worse than Faranat could imagine. If she could see people doing things... Her own ability had allowed their family to elude their captors for the better part of a decade - so why not now? Why did she feel that she deserved this treatment?
Faranat realized he'd gone totally soft for her. She was a pretty young woman, but not even half of his age, and he felt ... well, he felt far more than grandfatherly toward her. While it might not be true that she deserved to have been attacked, she certainly had a sort of appeal that even an aged man like he could appreciate.
"You get some sleep," Faranat instructed, and then lifted her chin to hope for another glimpse into her eyes. "I'll be here. Don't dream about bad things, Steffa. Only dream of good things."
She blinked, and said, "I dream of freedom, just like any other forced Slave. You've never known it, so you wouldn't have this fear. This ache."
Though he wanted to seek truth in the depths of her eyes, it was his turn to look away. Concern folded his white-grey brows together. "... My family has always served. It is all we know. I wonder what it was like to run free and only answer to your parents call, instead of the demands of a Lord or Lady. Lady Szhe has always -"
"That bitch can rot in the sea. She took my father - she sent my mother away forever, and she sold my brother. What kind of woman can do that? Barren iced-over brute."
Faranat's eyes grew very wide indeed.
"I would never have thought that a woman who'd never spoken two words in fifty years would have such a vocabulary," he said with half a grin. Steffa looked back up, eyes brighter with a bit of anger and hate, but then changed to a suddenly bemused look.
She started to laugh - but it turned into a wailing sob. Faranat remained by her side, until the mid morning of the next day, hugging her and singing old songs to her in a quiet, broken voice.

"He probably has quite a lot of good working years in him, so don't look at that age group and think he's not worth having." Said Master Hwroo to the crowd as they looked over their pamphlets. "He's quite docile now but he'd been used for more dangerous work in his youth, and is very well trained. He has done exceptionally well in personal service in his later years."
The Membayar running this Hard Stock auction for Lady Szhe's estate looked over the few things that he knew about any of her Slaves. The Bayaran had been raised immediately when she'd died, as per the law, but the Slaves had to be sold to cover any other expenses. Since she had no family of her own, she'd willed a number of things to he and his company, which was kind of her. But she'd also stipulated that when she died, if some project or other was not finished - it be destroyed and not given off to some 'undeserving Holder'. That was a great pity, Hwroo thought, since that big stoneworks in the scrub desert she owned had almost become the best quarry site on all Kiran.
He'd thought about ignoring or changing that portion of the documentation, in fact. But... Instead he chose to ignore the 'destroying' part, and simply let the property go untended. There would be no point in honoring her wishes when he knew they were purely out of spite.
"But this Slave is quite elderly," said one younger Lord of Faranat. It was true, he wasn't doddering yet, but he was rather old, and starting to look it. He looked rather offended, as well.
Mostly because he'd been expected - by the other servants and Bayaran anyway - to have Inherited something, or at the very least been Raised to Worker for his long service to the Lady. That too, was something Hwroo didn't understand about Szhe's wishes. She really was a genuine cold article.
So perhaps it was a good thing she couldn't have had children.
Hwroo turned his attention on Faranat, and then to the young Lord. "Well, then Lord Bex should probably move along to the younger stock. There are dozens of useful ones, so if this one does not please his eyes perhaps another shall." The Master was quite good at making these upstart Owners feel good about themselves - at the same time as insulting them. Of course, most Lords were good at the opposite, regarding their Membayar counterparts like him.
Faranat didn't like the idea of being put into an auction, especially one like this. He was a personal bodyguard, a servant who was meant to be close at hand to things private - not to be suddenly sent to a kitchen or made into a butler. Szhe had trusted him with such personal actions that he truly wondered what had gotten into her when she wrote her will. It must have slipped her mind that when she was young, and he barely younger, they'd even become lovers for a moment.
...And perhaps that moment was it, he thought back while the Master began selling some of the field workers and stone quarry hands. Perhaps it was when she was forced to realize she didn't need to protect herself from an unwanted pregnancy - that she started to hate her Slaves so much.
Yet there would always be a spark of love in him, for his cold Lady. Faranat was almost embarrassed to admit it. Especially now. There was no need to defend her actions - she'd said and done whatever she felt like and now was having her final laugh at them all. Suddenly he felt like spitting on her grave.
When someone shouted, "How much for the cat-eyed one?" Faranat's attention sharpened back onto the auction. Steffa had largely turned back into her sullen, vacant self after a while. She would come to him, privately, to cry or to laugh or even to share her body willingly. He had been greatly flattered then, and was prouder of himself now for never having told Szhe.
"Welllll, this one is a bit of a quandary - she's a solid worker, nice muscularity - but the notes have it that she won't speak."
"Won't or can't?" Someone else asked, and Hwroo checked his notes.
"Says won't. Has been known to. But as I said, she's documented as a hard worker. Doesn't complain either."
Muttering ran through the assembled buyers. Faranat stepped with his typical confidence from his slightly sequestered area, to the ground. And the muttering stopped - then became quite heated.
"With respect, Master," Faranat said, "Steffa is ... a very special woman."
The Membayar was able to curb his tongue, but several of the Owners and High Holders in the auction area didn't, and said things like 'special to you' and 'servant to a servant' but they ignored them.
"She is very well Bred, even though her paperwork will not show that. She is descended from Beast masters and strong psionics run in her family."
Carefully, Faranat glanced at Steffa whose expression did not change - but he felt a strangely familiar tingling. He knew she would rather have him running things, than any stranger from some agency.
"She has been known to foretell the future - for her own self, not for others," Faranat looked at the young Lordlings thinking they could somehow control it for themselves, "And she does show a strong connection to wildlife when it's nearby."
"You're saying this is a Tuned Slave?" Someone said, and her long fur-covered ears and silken coat of downy yellow fur gave her away easily as an Animal Master herself.
"I cannot say whether she is tuned so strongly as to become your equal, BeastMistress," Faranat said.
Through this all, some of the Lords and High Masters were concerned that Master Hwroo wasn't properly controlling the auction. But then again, he wasn't a Lord - he was merely a Membayar - and didn't have the proper skills to put this old Slave in his place.
The Animal Mistress came forward, and bowed a bit to Hwroo, asking, "may I see her closely?"
"...Of course," Hwroo said, standing aside. The line of Slaves went on in clumps for half a Unit, gatherings of field workers and quarrymen, and a house full of personal Slaves, they were all rather well behaved, but most didn't want to be there at all. But they all knew the penalty for trying to run away. Look at Steffa.
The mutated younger Animal Mistress - gathering her own set of stares and mutterings when she came to the line of Slaves - looked or tried to anyway, at Steffa's eyes.
"It's okay," she said softly. "I can feel your anger and pain. Your friend is quite loyal to you," she gently looked away and at Faranat, who hadn't quite heard it from his distance. "Would you like to come with me, and see what you could do with your abilities? I can see they've been sorely neglected for many years. But that could change easily."
Steffa swallowed and blinked, looking back up at the brown-red eyes of her buyer, and said, "only if he comes with me," in a low voice.
"Of course. I can do that."
The woman turned on her oddly shaped heel (she was for all the world, an upright yellow-colored rabbit. No one had seen such a thing around here in Aakal.) and went to pay for the pair. That was all she wanted, really, now that she could do so legally, the Animal Mistress wanted to flex her own buying power.
She wasn't all that good at deciding how to command the Slaves, some Lady or Lord noticed. She was rather soft about it. Asking instead of telling them, to come to her side when the transaction was finished. How simple of her. Those strange Animal Masters were just not quite cut out for this ownership deal, were they? Well, not in the proper ways at least. If they required Slaves to run their homesteads while they did more important things, of course, that was one thing. But...
Steffa clung on to Faranat's long and somewhat bony arm, as they left.

The humming of machinery made Steffa wince. She wasn't sure why Animal Masters like her Mistress Willow needed them at all.
"You know that I'm not meant to use this in this manner," Willow said, quietly. "They're meant only for animal uses."
In Steffa's quiet way, the need was made clear. When her eyes focused upon the cooling body of Faranat, all she could do was blink her tears away.
"...Please?" Steffa said, "if I ever do anything in the future, I'll do it more than willingly if only you do this for me..."
Willow turned and looked at the odd woman. Her bearing was a Slave's, but not like Willow had been when she was still of that Status. When her Owner realized the potential of having fostered a truly tuned mutant child in his house he raised her and had her trained up to her Status of Animal Master. Willow and he were quite close, and it often surprised the long-eared Mistress that he hadn't asked her to marry him sooner than he did. She had gently turned him down, but promised that some day she'd say yes.
So Steffa had a stranger look to her than Willow had. An almost defiantly tired look, not particularly eager to please like some Slaves looking to gain favor, and not quite angry in the way that many Permanently Bonded folks could be. Something in this woman's history was making her this way. Eventually, Willow decided, she'd find out. But she wasn't the type to pry - she knew that this request was the only thing standing between having a truly great partner in work, and having a Slave who would never speak or act for herself again.
"It's not an easy task - I mean," Willow reminded Steffa, "he's ... well, he's dead. But, if this will make you happy I'll do it. I'm sure there will be a time when I call in this favor, and not as a Slave owes their Lord, you understand?"
Steffa nodded.
There were extraction tools which Breeders could use, that could take cells from donors and allow them to be mixed - the most advanced form of Breeding available was only to the most rich and well-trained medical professionals.
It was also available to Animal Masters, with the legal stipulation that it not be used on anything save beasts.
To make Steffa happy, then, Beast Mistress Willow began to extract sperm cells left in Faranat's dead body, into the machinery for storage.
"You understand that I can't use this for a typical insemination," Willow commented as the device hummed. "That would require an actual... donation, on his part. There would be other chemicals and reactions taking place. So, that means that at some point I must do the same with your eggs. If you want a child, Steffa, it's going to have to be created by hand, and placed back into you later."
Steffa nodded. Though Faranat had been dead for mere hours, this was the only way she knew to commemorate his existence. She trusted him with her life and her secrets - what few she would give away - and now he was gone. But Willow was very kind to her. She asked private questions carefully, exactly as a woman of stronger Status wouldn't have the tact to do. Steffa wasn't ready to tell her story, but perhaps some day she would.
She also knew that while she was fertile like the rest of her family, time would eventually run out on her and she'd be left barren and cold like Szhe. She shuddered at the thought.
When she did so, Willow turned and tilted her head. Because she had those long somewhat floppy ears, it made her look far more curious and soft than anyone else would have. Steffa let a tiny grin cross her lips. Her lips hadn't been all chapped and sore as they had been while she was working in the stone quarry. Her fingers had healed from constant cuts. Her back no longer ached from sleeping on a mere cot in a chilled barrack.
Willow seemed to treat her few Slaves as though they were her family - and expected their loyalty in return, which she got for the most part. Since she'd gone around buying estate stock, she was pretty much getting someone else's cast off and non-Inheritable individuals. Some of them worked better than others. In the six years before Faranat's death, there had been two other attempts to acquire good Stock, but of the four Slaves that were bought, three of them had to be sold off almost immediately. They were just too used to an Owner or High Holder bossing them around, and expected their new Lady to do the same.
In so many ways, certain Slaves were just exactly as snobbish about things as their Owners.
Steffa realized that the process of collecting her dear friend's cells was over. Willow indicated a small chilling box which contained samples of dozens of animal sperm and eggs, and now had Faranat's as well.
"Now, I can't explain to anyone why he's been in here. I'm afraid we're going to have to move him, again. So far as anyone else knows, he's been laying in his deathbed and we've merely cleaned the sheets and his bedclothes." Willow announced, standing. She put her furry arm around Steffa, and nuzzled her ear, "he loved you dearly, too, Steffa. I could feel the both of you so strongly. I think you're doing the right thing, asking this of me."
Steffa nodded again, and they took Faranat's body back up to the Slave quarters, where his bed lay properly made and clean. Only one other knew about this at all, and it was a rather dull-witted servant who barely understood the concept of death let alone the complexity of 'legal use' and 'time of death established'. Willow didn't really have to report the death at all, but for her records and yearly worth she'd be best off doing so. The expense of burial was one they would soak up. Faranat had been just as loyal to Willow as he had to Steffa in those years, offering exceptionally well-timed advice on Hard Stock command, and the like. Who else better to instruct someone than a man who'd done nothing else all his life? He would be missed.
After they had a small and very personal ceremony to mark his death, and buried him in the lovely area near a large tree of the Mistress' namesake by the mansion, things largely got back to normal. It took several days, but not long after was when Steffa finally came to Willow's office door and timidly knocked.
Steffa had been working with the feed and equipment, mostly, because she would hardly take instruction for her suppressed powers. Now, though, she had little else to do but wonder what they really would do.
"My mother could call animals, we never went hungry because of that," Steffa said, almost startling Willow from her paperwork. The Animal Mistress beckoned Steffa in and pulled a seat up next to the Slave. Her voice was low, careful, half-pained, but it was music to Willow's long ears.
"She always brought something in with her, a tree-flier, or one of those fat ground birds," Steffa said, her eyes were misted with memories more than a century old. "And I remember she would find these wonderful little beetles that only flew in the summertime. I never saw any of them in the desert - only up in the woodlands where I grew up."
"Where was that, Steffa?" Willow asked, and Steffa's eyebrows knit together. Her dark skin had paled a little over the last few years, from not having to work under the sun, but her bright orange-yellow hair had maintained its color and proved fascinating to watch as Willow tried to get a bit more out of the woman.
"I... I don't even know. I was young when we were sold, taken I should say, so ... We weren't living in a Zoned place, just a ..." She went silent, "My father was a Slave, but my mother was like you, she would have been a Beast Master, if she hadn't stolen him away from - Szhe," she almost said 'that bitch' again, but her bitterness had been so old and tired by now that it wasn't even worth the effort. "It was north, not here at all. We flew over the water to get to the quarry site, and I've never seen woods like that again, the whole time here on Kiran. I miss the trees."
Willow leaned back and gave Steffa a different kind of look. Under that gaze, Steffa started to wilt and withdraw but then the Mistress turned to look in a drawer for something.
"I want to bring you to this Breeder I know for testing, Steffa. You've never been properly screened for things. He is very good at his job, he taught me to use the collection devices and work with cells - it's all theory until you actually get in and do it, you know?"
"I guess," Steffa said, worried. Szhe's on-hand healers and medics were rarely Breeders of any high degree, so she'd never really met one - like any of her mother's side of the family for instance.
"I trust his abilities, you should too. He..." Willow looked away, "don't be offended, but I think he ought to be the one playing with your eggs, not me. As I said, it's in theory all the same thing, but I'm used to working with animals. Not people. I think he'll understand why I've collected Faranat's cells, because it would have been too late for it to wait. But I'm just not comfortable doing it myself. I don't want to mess it up."
"If you think he's not going to get you in trouble," Steffa said, but Willow waved a hand.
"I'd be in far more trouble if I were found to have done it myself, that's how things work. But you need to be screened for tunings and anything else on the charts. They're not done mapping everything yet you know."
Steffa was confused, but curious. Her mind hadn't been truly engaged in anything more important than which stone was the right width for almost eighty years. Now, it was as if a child was aching to come back out to play.
"Mapping?" She asked. Willow grinned.
"Let's go, and I'll show you." She stood and held out her fur-covered hand, which Steffa took.
When they arrived at Muyar's main business strip - it was hardly considered a city by most standards but it was home, and it was better than a desert to Steffa - Willow took her Slave in to a big office that showed the Breeders symbol on a large window, and had photos of many happy children stuck haphazardly on the walls of the main room. The success stories.
"I called," Willow said to the receptionist. The Bayaran nodded and pushed a button to alert the Breeder in his office beyond that he had visitors of some import. Willow turned to Steffa, "since he was my instructor, I get to go on back," she grinned widely.
It looked to Steffa that Willow thought of this as a bit of a game. She loved annoying higher Status people like Owners and High Masters, but anyone else was given more friendly treatment or ignored entirely. Apparently this Breeder entertained his students at a more personal level than some.
When Steffa entered the hallways Willow immediately pointed out a huge tract of lines along the wall. Steffa thought it was merely artwork. It was a genetic map of the Zekiran genome.
Small bright lines connected and made a bit of a colorful map. While she was looking at it intently, Willow noticed her Breeder friend exiting his smaller room.
"Any new additions to the map?" She asked, and the tall teal-grey colored man shook his head.
"Not since last month, Willow dear," he said. His voice was high, hardly even masculine. Steffa looked up at him and almost immediately away in a submissive posture so familiar to her under Szhe. The Breeder ticked his tongue. "Now now, no need to be shy. You've got fascinating eyes, my dear. Show them to me, please?"
"I... My grandmother or someone had them like this too," she said. She'd never met Khadja of course, how could she know?
"If you'll come into the office, and allow me to take a blood sample, I can show you where you stand on this map here," he indicated the big lined work of art. "I'm Breeder Vel, by the way. You are?"
"Slave Steffa, Lord," she said. Nothing more came from her lips, but Vel knew it wasn't because she was being obstinate. He'd seen his share of well and truly abused Slaves in his day. There was something strangely familiar about this one, but he couldn't quite place what it was.
Something she'd said, perhaps something Willow had mentioned, in the few words there was a secret. But until he had a sample under his scope, he couldn't say for sure why she was making things click in his head.

"But you think it's enough to Raise, then?" Willow asked, and Vel nodded.
"There's still something else. I don't honestly have the time or the talent to hunt this down, but... I know there is a match to this code somewhere." He tapped his finger on the coded results of the blood work. "There are some very rare recessives playing about in her genes, Willow. And you said she's wanting to be spliced with this deceased man?"
"I think it would be a good match," Willow said, "but you're the expert. He wasn't a powerful psionic if he was at all, but I know he had many other qualities I'd call desirable. He certainly lived longer than most Slaves, I know that. I don't think Szhe had any of her Slaves tested or even brought in for Breeding evaluation on a regular basis, so I can't say if his code is cataloged. I have an image of him somewhere. You'd see it I think. I don't pretend to have the Breeder's Eye, but I know you do."
"And you know me rather well," Vel laughed. "I'll do that for you, if you'll Raise her. I would never want a child of the quality she'd offer to be born Slaved. Not even to a father who was one as well."
Steffa would be so happy to hear this. The mixing of Steffa's features with the pale beige skin and white-silvery hair, Willow could imagine that the offspring might even have the same color skin as her own bright yellow fur. But the powers! Oh, how Steffa was a prize catch - and dirt cheap. This was the kind of news that anyone wanted to hear. That their hidden prize would really turn out to have the potential of a true master.
On that note, "She might never reach her true potential, Vel," Willow said in passing. "She's never been allowed to use her abilities, so I don't even know where to begin. And what was that feature you were saying was so special?"
Vel nodded, and took out his notes again. "It's odd, and not really something that any usual Tuned mutants have, but she's got a line of strong weather-shaping or pressure-sensing ability in her. I doubt it would show up in her, not even as a latency, but with the right coaxing that sort of thing could be very useful in the future."
"And you think this is something that you've seen before?" The Animal Mistress asked. Vel nodded again.
"Yes, in the Breeders community itself. Vain little notes we pass around to each other about our families and ancestry."
"Now that's definitely a silly egocentric thing to do," Willow giggled.
"But handy. Because I swear I've seen that combination - feline features and weathershaping - in another line. I very much doubt that it appeared out of nowhere this strongly, in a random Slave."
Willow paused. What was it that Steffa'd said? "... Her father was a terraformer, but her mother would have been an Animal Master."
"Eh?" Vel said, looking up from the notes. He would often fall into a trance watching the lines of information come together. "She carries only the faintest amount of her father's abilities, then. A strong telepath, suppressed so long or untrained like that, some kind of coercive ability I think. Not everything is clear. But perhaps if she starts to bloom these powers will be written down on my wall first."
"You've been first before," Willow laughed as she left the office to give Steffa her great news, "and I'm sure you'll be first again."

"What if I don't want to pair with this Jeelat fellow?" Steffa pouted, "I ... I wanted Faranat's child first."
Willow sat across the big table from the now Animal Master status Steffa, and leaned on her elbow. "... Consider this your payment for me, then. I told you it would be important, when I asked, and I told you it wouldn't be a Slave's obligation to her Lady. It's me asking you, person to person. And believe me, I understand your feelings - I can sense them from across the field, you know," Steffa softly muttered a 'sorry' at that, but Willow continued, "but this one time, it's more important to the ... well, to the whole world, that this pairing be approved. I know you'd want to care for Faranat's child, more than one you don't want. But you might change your mind when you see Jeelat. And, besides," Willow waved her hand, "Vel has agreed to your splice already. ... Stars, we could do them both. There's nothing saying you couldn't donate two eggs instead of one, and fertilize them both in the clinic. There are always women who can carry a child to term even if they can't create their own."
Steffa's mouth moved around a snack, while she thought. "I don't know if I like that thought, somewhere out there a child with my half of the gene pool in it, and I don't know them?"
"I never said you'd not know them!" Willow said, exasperated. "I swear, Steffa, you're impossible."
"But you want me to do this, really. You're asking me to forsake my one true desire and ..."
"And have another baby. But as I said, there's nothing against having a foster mother, instead. Just that you okay the pairing, and donate if you won't bear the child yourself. Most women would count themselves lucky to even think of two children, let alone one."
"You sound like a Breeder," Steffa said.
"And I know you've been hearing a lot from them recently." Willow grinned, popping a baked treat into her mouth.
"Well, I guess it couldn't hurt while I'm already there for the splice..." Steffa said, and Willow almost breathed an audible sigh of relief. "But I'd have to think about it, first - and I want to meet him. You say he's clever."
"I say he's brilliant."
"That remains to be seen, Willow - you think a Steed standing on its hind legs is brilliant."
"You're the one who keeps getting offers," Willow said. "It's up to you to turn down or agree to any of them. I'd say that Jeelat is one of the more promising male psionics on the Land, and they're seeming kind of rare nowadays."
"Vel tried explaining that to me, but ... I just don't have the head for it."
"That's steed-droppings and you know it. Your family line is all over the Breeders and Animal Master's markets. You're bred for this."
"Peh."
"He's very handsome," Willow prodded after a moment of silence.
"And you think that stinger-beetles are pretty! You're hardly one to judge attractiveness!" Willow knew that this was just a delaying tactic on the part of her friend and now-cohort. It had taken three years to get her out of the silent shell she'd lived in for nearly a century, but it was well worth the effort.
"If I told you I wanted to breed him myself, you'd probably think less of him for it. So I won't, I will just say that Vel chose him out of hundreds of eligible males all around the world, and I think he's right."
Sighing, Steffa finally said, "if it'll shut you up about him, fine. I'll agree to meet him. I don't want this to go like some bad viddie. And I don't want this to wind up like my first ... encounter with a man."
"That, I swear, will never happen again," Willow said, her voice a low tone telling of her deep sympathy. "In fact for things like this there are laws against it that really really mess the perpetrator up. So just be fair to him, will you? Give him a chance. I know he won't be Faranat - but maybe he'll be warm and cuddly and sweaty later on."
"... You are the dirtiest woman in the world, Willow," Steffa grunted, trying not to laugh.

"And you're certain that you aren't uncomfortable?" Asked Vel, and Steffa shook her head.
"I have to pee, that's all."
"Well then thank you for sharing that," Vel laughed. "It's a good thing that both of these children will be small. While you've got good wide hips, there is only so much space for two growing babies in there," he indicated Steffa's taut belly. She was more than half a year on in her strange half-spliced half-natural pregnancy and showing as if she were two-thirds through.
Of course, Jeelat had been to her liking. He had a beautiful ruff of fur down his back - such an exotic feel under clenching fingers. His eyes that matched hers only in different colors. His striking orange and black velvety skin intrigued her intensely, and would surely look very fine combined with her dark coloration.
She was already thinking like a Breeder, true to her blood.
The rest of her term was spent in a relaxing and small homestead that she had built with several others. While they couldn't legally share the land the way they wanted to, they each took turns in it anyway. But she Held the land - her very first homestead that the law acknowledged. It was near Willow's land, on a rockier portion where there was a stream and dark-topped trees, overlooking the lower flatter land where Willow's homestead mansion sat.
From that mansion, one could barely see the little stone and beam cottage among the trees. So Willow decided that at least a small amount of Steffa's sire's genes showed through: her design for such things was pure and solid - and she'd helped with certain animal enclosures to the same effect. That was the subtlety of her Status, that any small aspect could be used to help out the breeding and fostering of beasts. She could do more now than before, but her true power hadn't surfaced properly yet. She could control animals already. But both Vel and Willow knew that she would also be able to do so with humans eventually.
Steffa's tales of guiding Faranat to her side, of nudging the opinions of those around her, and similar things over the course of her Slavery led them both to believe that she'd always had this power. Perhaps it was that which kept Lady Szhe away from their home as she was an untrained child? Somehow combined with her ability to foretell events, which had slowly dwindled in its intensity.
No one could ever really know what it had been that saved them for those years, Steffa certainly couldn't figure it out.
By the end of winter, Steffa was ready to pop. Almost literally. Her small muscular frame dragged itself around almost unwillingly, from seat to seat - unless she was feeling stiff and needed to trundle about. No one had ever seen a woman quite as pregnant as Steffa was with two children.
Vel insisted that she come to the clinic to give birth, even though Steffa's wish was that they were born on her own Land. He convinced her that though her heart was in the right place, there might be complications with twin births that could not be fixed far away from the medical center. The good Breeders' sense in her head let her agree. There was no actual emergency - when the babes were ready, they were birthed quickly, in short succession, and it was very obvious who was sired by which father.
Jeelat's child came out first, a head full of bright red hair contrasting against his rich brown-striped black skin color. Faranat's son was pale golden in skin, hair a shimmering wet-looking platinum. Both of them were quite loud upon their birth.
"Jeff and Faras," Steffa breathed, face still red and sweaty from her efforts. The pair were bundled in warm towels and handed off to their mother - while Jeelat proudly looked on. He wouldn't really become part of an intimate family - he knew that he could never compete with this long-dead man who'd sired his son's companion. But he did have land nearby, and he would certainly be a father if Steffa wished him to be.

"Social butterfly."
"Wallflower."
They went back and forth all night. The trip to Jokan to celebrate the four-hundredth anniversary of the Colonization of Zekira they were taking was a big event to the Kiran natives. Though they were both of the same mother, Jeff and Faras seemed like night and day. They looked it, certainly, and their seventy years of bickering certainly went to prove it, but still - they were brothers so far as they were concerned, and as brothers they did things together like this.
In fact they'd wooed the same women, not necessarily at the same time. They went into complimentary services, Jeff was ideal as an Animal Master, while his half-brother quickly realized his potential as a Breeder. His powers were weaker, but more focused; Jeff's were broad and covered many strange aspects of beasts and men alike.
When the party was to start was anyone's guess. The time of landing in Nakani - technically the first colony - was well documented. But this was half a world away. It would be close to midnight, but the party invites stated be there by dusk. The sun was setting, and with it Jeff and Faras saw dozens of other vehicles (both steed-drawn and self-powered) heading toward a large sprawl of buildings. Lights were everywhere, dotting the grassy grounds around the huge edifice. They blasted brightly into the evening sky, equaling those which were spread at intervals around the whole planet at large gathering places. Everyone wanted to celebrate.
It was an odd way of commemorating the fact that not one of the original colonists were alive any longer - every single participant in the party this year had been born on Zekiran soil. The last such century celebration had two extremely old holdouts from the colonization process, both born less than a year before land fall. This time, they were gone. They would honor their dead, praise those to come, and largely get into a drunken stupor that no one dared disturb the next day. The whole next week was pretty much off limits for anyone with a real life - of course there would be transportation Workers and people who kept the food and drink coming... But for anyone else, it was a week off that would never been seen again for another century.
Both Faras and Jeff doubted they'd be seeing the next one - but for different reasons. After all, they did have wildly different lifespans to look forward to based upon their genetics. But they both believed they had made enemies that might try killing them somewhere along the way. That is, unless they got to do to each other first.
They had never come to serious blows - but that might change when they saw one particular woman at this particular party.
Jeff and Faras arrived together, and immediately split up even though they could still contact one another telepathically. They'd done so since long before their birth - and they double-teamed people they disliked by dropping hints to one another this way.
But it was as though their eyes fell upon the same woman at the same moment. She was a stunning violet-skinned beauty with red-shaded curly hair. She wore the latest fashion and did so the way that a professional model might. Her smile was dazzling and her manners were obviously highly Bred - or at least highly refined. Since Jeff and Faras had not been raised among the Owners of the world, for obvious reasons, they were only aware of a tiny fraction of social interaction. Faras was most comfortable among people, Jeff preferred animals and other beast lords.
They both seemed to pause in deep thought upon seeing this woman, though. Their thoughts crowded together and most likely bled over to other telepaths and empaths in the room.
~~She is the most beautiful woman in the world, isn't she?~~ Said Faras.
^^I would tend to believe so, yes,^^ thought Jeff.
~~I saw her first.~~
^^... You'd like to think so, wouldn't you?^^
They met each other's eyes across the room. Both had their mother's variegated iris coloration, Jeff's eyes were slit pupiled to go along with the dusting of fur on his dark skin - but they could both focus on one another at quite a distance.
They were about to have a more heated discussion at a distance, when another psionic mind cut in to theirs.
++I believe I would have the say as to which of you might provide the most entertainment, this evening, but I would far rather you both not fight over me. It's terribly unbecoming for the occasion.++ The voice was strong, subtle, and feminine. Dark around the edges - so foreign to their well-tuned minds. It was very rare that anyone else disturbed their private mental landscape.
Both left blinking and somewhat paled, they realized as one that she'd been listening in on them.
Faras knew that she was stronger than he by a long shot - and immediately his Breeder's instincts ran into high gear. Rather than embarrass himself and his brother any farther in the eyes of this woman, Faras made his way around the large dance floor and to his brother's side.
"I can't believe we-" They both started, and laughed. It was typical. They couldn't stay mad at one another for long, but... She was there, beyond. Surrounded by a cadre of Lords and Masters, Ladies and Healers. And, obviously, a knot of Slaves. At least one of them was a bodyguard, while two others kept getting this drink refilled or that snack off a tray. A small amount of prying on Faras' part brought her name and Status to his ear: High Mistress Cheval of Zovora.
Sadly, neither brother knew exactly where Zovora was. They knew it wasn't in Kiran, their grasp of geography however ended with the Land's shorelines. Zerin was not their first choice of living space, but they'd been invited to this party rather than the one in Nakani as they had been staying to tend a friend's mansion.
They both determined they'd need to learn more about Zovora. If anything, to see when this vision of beauty and class would be drifting through it again.
When the pair found her eerily yellow eyes looking at them from over a wine glass, it was as if the world stopped turning. They were both about to fall off of it, surely.
"Hello, boys," she said. Her voice was liquid obsidian. It would sharpen later, perhaps, when it cooled.
"We're hardly boys," muttered Jeff.
"High Mistress," Faras nodded and she nodded back. "You must forgive us, we've... never seen such grace at any gathering in Kiran."
"Of course not," said some passing Lordling, "they don't grow them like her in the desert."
"Hold your tongue, Lord Berat," Cheval spat, that obsidian sharpness had shown up much more quickly than the brothers had expected. "My father is a council member in Telva, and I'd like you to remember that is in fact in the Land of Kiran." She turned back to the brothers, and her face softened from its mask of brief social anger. "Don't listen to the likes of him. He is jealous because I turned him down at a Steed race weeks ago."
"I imagine you'd have to turn down quite a lot of offers," Jeff had finally found his tongue.
Cheval laughed, "You would be amazed at the number, but you'd be more amazed at the number who never find the courage to ask."
"Then do turn us down some day," Faras said, making his brother smirk. "You do realize that as a Breeder I could insist."
Cheval's face turned down and her lips curled up. "You wouldn't dare. Using a Breeder's card on me?"
"Who better to use one on?" Faras said, almost flippantly. His brother choked down a laugh.
"He would try, I have to use the old fashioned way of swallowing my pride and simply asking. Would you care to dance?" Jeff said, slightly surprising Faras. Faras' pale eyebrow went up a little, as he watched Cheval mull this over.
There was a pack of eagerly waiting Lords and highly placed Holders nearby, waiting to descend.
She placed her wine glass gently into Faras' hand, looking right into his yellowy-green eyes. "This means I shall be back for it when the dance is over," she told him. He knew she was playing with them both, but ...
But it was a marvelous game indeed that she'd brought to their attention.

While the Healers worked, Jeff paced about and pulled on his hair. "Who could want to do this to her!?" He kept saying. He remained out of their way, as the group of psionic and well-trained healers did their work. Faras arrived a moment or two later, his Steed dancing about until a Slave took the reigns and settled her.
"Jeff -" Faras said, grasping his brother's arms and shaking some sense into him. "Let me look around, there might be something, some one, who saw it."
The assassination attempt was the third such in four years - someone wanted Cheval dead. This time it was far more serious because she carried her first child. Jeff did not want to lose either one, of course, but he was beside himself with grief.
Faras cast about the scene. His brother and Cheval had been walking to their carriage, when Cheval had collapsed. Jeff had found blood on his hand when he picked her up, her back slick with it as it ran from an open wound near her shoulder.
There was no weapon present, and no obvious traces of anyone who had been nearby.
When Faras walked into the stables, however, he felt something strange. A deep tingling at the edge of his mind. He was more than intelligent enough to keep his wits about him. He didn't jerk around or make any sudden moves, he merely looked as though he was examining the place for hidden weapons or people. Under this blanket, behind that door.
But while his body went through a mechanical examination of the place, his brain and powers were working very hard indeed.
~~There is someone here,~~ He sent to Jeff. They had practiced their telepathic links until Cheval couldn't hear them, so Faras knew he wasn't going to be pried in upon unless someone was far more powerful than he.
^^Find them,^^ was all his brother could manage. The grief spilled out and brought tears to Faras' eyes. She wouldn't die, he knew that much, but he couldn't even say why. Perhaps their mother's foretelling was beginning to show up in him as well.
Faras made to exit the building. There were two Steeds resting in their large stalls, but he felt someone above. The loft was filled with tools and feed sacks, and those were the realm of his distraught brother. Mentally he did the equivalent of flicking that someone's ear.
He heard a yelp - that person was clearly not a telepath, no matter if they had some other power.
With the strange whooshing and thud of a weight through the air and onto dirt, that someone leapt to the floor of the building and attempted to leave quickly.
Faras could not see them. But - he threw himself to the right, sharply intercepting a body that was all but invisible. Shortly, that body became quite visible as a man's shape. The air seemed to shimmer around him and finally exposed a briefly unconscious culprit.
In his shock-green hand he clutched the hilt of a long bladed knife. In his other, a rope which became visible up to the loft. With his head sharply struck against the wooden wall of the stable, he had little ability to keep up his psionic camouflage. But, he would wake shortly.
"I've found him!" Faras finally yelled, and several Bayaran and Workers came running in. They were astonished, but no more so than when the man regained consciousness. He immediately tried to turn himself transparent again, but got a sharp kick in the ribs by Faras.
"You've got some talking to do," he warned.
"Not to you I don't," the man spat. He was led away by some of the local legal teams, they had been busy interviewing the stable hands.
When one saw this would-be assassin, his gruff face turned to a dangerous half-grin. "Well well well..." Was all he said, apparently he knew who it was. Faras left it in their hands, while he went to see how Cheval was doing.
He could sense the child was fine, Cheval was in shock. The medics began walking her about, and in the evening they finally had her fixed up enough that she would not need any more direct care. Especially since Faras was on hand now - he outranked all but one of the Healers, with his expertise and Breeding training. He would handle whatever other emergencies might arise.
"You were lucky," he announced to the pair. "If he'd gotten away this would go on again."
"I wish that he'd fallen and broken his neck, when you cornered him," Cheval muttered. Her shoulder was bandaged and her pride in strips along with her dress.
"Do you know him?" Jeff asked, and Cheval shook her head.
"I don't. But I'm sure that I may know who hired him, so when he begins to confess I want to hear it all. I'm rather tired of this." She looked at Faras and said, more seriously, "you know I can feel your doubts, but I assure you. I've not purposefully made these enemies of mine. And I'd no wish to share them or wish them on anyone else. You know that."
"I do," he replied. "But I do worry. Even though you might not have meant to, you've obviously made yourself a problem somewhere."
"If we find out who hired him, it'll be the end of it." Cheval said flatly. That meant that she'd use whatever she had at her own disposal to rectify the situation, even if it meant hiring her own assassin after her enemy. Such was the way of High Holders. It was not particularly Jeff's way, nor Faras' but since she'd situated herself with them her ways had to slowly become theirs. She wasn't about to change.
It was learned later, that there was a political move which she opposed blandly in the councils where she Held land. Someone wanted to change a certain Holding law or other, and while it was popular among a small set it certainly wouldn't do anyone else any good. She'd opposed it along with several other people. Yet, they were not getting targeted.
Her Holdings were the highest, so she was the biggest target. If she fell, the others would soon realize their mistake and vote for these changes. And naturally once they found this out, those Holders banded together and bought up nearly equal amounts of land in that Area - just to piss off the foursome of malcontents.
As she'd predicted. That was the end of it.

Faras had to admit it was almost more fun to work with his brother's Breeding than his own. It gave him a chance to look at both subjects at once, for one thing. Now that Valjee had come to term and showed them all that Cheval's psionics could be paired off with nearly anyone's and still remain true, both of them could be offered up for a new pairing.
Not that they would be having any time for about a decade, to do so! Valjee sported her father's stripes, but in darkest brown upon the richest violet-black skin anyone had seen before. She had vibrantly red hair that already had a bit of curl to it, and her father's line of it down her spine, only with a more narrow and tame look to it. Her eyes - lightning yellow on violet. She had a bit of a tail, one which would not be more than a span long, but it was tipped in that same brilliant red hair.
She'd know how to use it to her advantage. Faras swore that he felt the girl thinking while she was in the womb - and though Cheval didn't want to admit it, she'd heard it too.
Valjee grew up among splendors that a High Holder could afford, with the depth and love that an Animal Master would offer, and with an uncle who immediately spotted ways to best train her in body and mind. She was tall, like her mother, swift as her father could be. Her fingers turned out to have stiff claws upon them, but those only served to make her more exotic. All during her childhood Valjee knew there were people staring at her - and she like her mother learned to appreciate those stares as flattery. She maintained her education as well as she was Bred to, impressing everyone by passing her High Holder's status exam at only thirteen years of age.
But she also wanted more than this. She wanted to run with beasts - which her mother laughingly told her if she did, she'd wind up with burrs in her fur like her father would get.
"All the better to find someone to help groom them out, mother," Valjee purred.
When she was twenty, and Cheval had at long last agreed to be Bred again (to Faras, naturally - they were an inseparable trio after she came along) Faras also had found out about another tailed mutant who had been Bred by his Owner, a Breedlady Jheahante. Vante was his name, he was a year older than Valjee - and available as far as the Breeders' network was concerned.
"It isn't quite the same as love," Valjee commented to her uncle. "But I know what you're thinking. And I think the Breedlady also thinks it, so who am I to judge?"
"We've made arrangements that the child will not be born under Jheahante's Ownership," Faras said, and Valjee looked relieved. She was familiar with the Breeder's laws, but didn't know enough about how to write up a contract to get out of it. Currently an Owner who was also a Breeder would legally Hold the offspring of the pairs brought under them. But since Faras contracted the female half of the deal, and Jheahante the male, it wouldn't seem right for her to Own now would it? At the very least, Jheahante was happy with the deal, the man was her son as well as her Slave already.
Veva proved to be a slightly more difficult birth than either of his parents expected. His longer tail was bunched around his shoulders at birth - it was a good thing that his great-uncle and grandmother were both present to help out. Valjee was exhausted but would be okay - Veva mewled softly at first but like his grandfather before him he finally let out a howl to tell the world he was present and accounted for.
"I'm not doing that again any time soon," Valjee sighed, finally getting some sleep after he stopped his cries.
In another room of the Telva Breeding Hall, some hours later, Cheval said just about the same thing.

Being born half a day apart brought Charsfa and Veva close the same way their respective father and grandfather had been. They hadn't shared a womb, but they shared enough. A generation and sixteen hours separated the pair, as nothing else would.
Veva grew bored in their class. Charsfa could hear his mental notation of 'what time is it? why can't it be later? there are fish to catch and all the best places will be taken by afternoon... why isn't it later?' Charsfa smirked.
+It is not later because you have no patience, cousin.+
~Ahh, don't you 'cousin' me. This class is boring me to tears. I don't know how you take it.~
There were four other High Holders in their class. Even though Charsfa was meant to be nudged into Breeding classes, he didn't much feel like doing it at the moment. He was young, yet. Breeding was expensive and difficult. He'd rather learn laws. Veva was glad someone wanted to. His easily distracted mind latched on to his gently twitching tail and didn't stop until the instructor cleared his throat loudly.
"And, if High Master Veva would please explain how his tail has anything to do with the acceptance of the Fifth Breed Law accord, I would love to hear it."
Veva looked up and blinked. His red eyebrows went up, and he gulped. "Um. It doesn't sir. I'm sorry. But the accord is something I'm already familiar with. It allows for stock to be used in trade for work completed. Usually, that means that the Bred child in question is the stock - but not always." He grinned. He would have been that stock, if not for his father's abilities to write contracts. Another Slave had been traded instead, one who would fit in better with the Breedlady's entourage and had little to do when the Animal Masters showed up to party at his prior home.
The Membayar instructor tilted his head, and nodded after a moment. "...Yes. Of course. You do know the subject, but the lesson I'd hoped you would learn would be to pay attention. Now. Let us move on to the fourth accord..."
Later in the afternoon, when all the good fishing spots had in fact been taken and the teenaged cousins walked along the riverbank near their family's home, Veva sighed.
"And what's that sigh mean, cousin?" Charsfa asked. "It isn't the fishing, we can do that any time."
"That class got me thinking."
"They're meant to do that, yes," Charsfa chided.
"No, I mean, about how it really did affect mother and all. My father is a Slave. I should have been one, too, even according to the standard deals."
"And that's bothering you." The taller and paler cousin said. He could tell it really was getting to his dark and striped relative. It fairly poured out of him, he'd never been good at disguising his empathic overspill.
"It is. And I want you to do something about it. I know you're better with words and laws and things. I think it'd be more important to have the right Breeders doing their own particular work - but you know how to put that into words better than I could."
"I know, you just want to go fishing." Charsfa smiled. "And don't forget, cousin, that my grandfather was a Slave too. I'll try working some things out. I haven't gone through the right courses yet so ... I think it'll be a while."
"I don't expect you to do it overnight," Veva smiled back. "But, don't you think it'd be proper? I mean, right now things are the way they are because the Breeders can't agree on one course of action. Yet we know they each try specializing in their own level of work. Some just help out the pairs in need, and others splice like there's no tomorrow. But the rest... It's all like a big legal blur to me."
"It is a big legal blur." Charsfa said, and then paused in his measured walk. His cousin stopped a moment later and turned. Veva saw on Charsfa's face the telltale signs of rumbling thought. Charsfa's rich deeply golden colored skin was going to get burnt if he stood there much longer, so Veva took his elbow and dragged him into the shade of one of the large trees overlooking the river bank.
"So many Breeders only do certain things," Charsfa said, "you're right. I'm going to look into who does what. I mean, after I've gotten my Status finalized and all."
"And are you headed toward Breeding too, or just Holding?"
"What do you mean, 'just' Holding?" Charsfa laughed. "It's enough for almost everyone who does it..."

After six years of schooling, and another three of Breeder education, Charsfa went into law studies. He'd explained to his instructors what he planned on researching, and they all agreed it was about time someone did it. Veva had finished his Animal Mastery long before - but stuck it out in his Breeders classes long enough to get a strong healing degree. It would come in handy when he was helping out at Steed fairs as someone injured could come to him, as well as bring their Steed if it had become hurt. He thought himself rather smart for doing things that way.
He helped his cousin do the research though - because in that time he'd never forgotten that afternoon spent discussing politics and the ways of Ownership and Breeding laws. Neither of them at the time had known how painfully little the legal system really covered in terms of a broad overall accord for behavior among Breeders.
Nor that there was no set amount of learning, or even standardized instruction in terms of who learned what. They both found those things out the long, hard way.
Another thirty years passed before Charsfa's research could yield anything other than numbers. He'd looked over trends in schooling, birth tracking and Ownership, even delved into the specifics of every documented Breeding agreement to see where they were similar and where they diverged. This all was cross-referenced to who Owned the results, who didn't, when the contracts said one thing and turned out different results... It was a massive project. Most Breeders didn't take him seriously behind the machinery of a clinic, but they all knew of Charsfa the legal guy.
He was rightfully proud of that, too. To have become known merely by having asked the right questions. Well, that and having almost accidentally produced an heir with a brilliant young woman who'd shown up at a Breeders convention with her own mentor. He hadn't really understood why they were so attracted to one another - but he knew that she smelled good (wasn't that Veva's territory?) and he made darn sure that there were no other men around that would get close to her.
Generations later they'd call it Hyperfertility, but he didn't know it then, neither did she. But he had a little greeny-golden daughter running around with her mother's pointed ears and ability to sense electric things, and his height and strong telepathic level.
Charsfa invited Veva over to his new Zerin based office, in a coastal marsh town called Kua. It was centrally located on a flight path, and he'd chosen it because he was flying over it all the time when crossing the Lands doing his research. They relaxed in a wide open room that let in brilliant reflections from the huge ocean beyond.
"I've almost finished my work, and I need to know if this is what you had in mind, cousin." Charsfa said, handing Veva a big packet of typed paper. There were graphs and charts, but there was also a clear and easily read synopsis by the end.
Veva nodded slowly the whole time he was reading. When he got to the end, he leaned back and announced, "cousin, you have yourself a world-worthy document. Now we've just got to convince the rest of the Breeders in the world of that."

The gathering of Breeders in Kua during the Fifth Century Celebration was the biggest ever. That seemed to be the theme for the world at the moment, some fifteen years after Charsfa had finished his documentation and begun pushing for legal changes.
Nearly every one of the people present at the Breeders convention had read his discourse and at least commented on it somehow. Most of them seemed to be gently in agreement - though one or two very vocal camps were outright incensed. Now there would be a vote.
There were speakers over the course of the convention, the whole week was filled with clever seminars and demonstrations, showing off new methods or even the latest in success stories. Charsfa noticed his daughter there with her mother, grinned madly at them, and waited for them to come by. Veva politely refrained from drooling on Yezi, but neglected to remember that Yfe, their daughter, was rather more related to him. After getting a good sound nudge in the ribs, and a flaming mental warning, Veva simply said, "I'll be over there, then," and waited for his cousin to start his own speech.
Almost everyone knew that this was why this whole convention was being assembled. That Charsfa had arranged for it to come to him, rather than he to be shipped away again, was cleverness on his part. Finally with a gigantic proportion of the Breeder's population present in one grand hall, Charsfa was introduced to a round of far more than polite applause.
He began with a small introduction, and thanked his cousin for starting him on this course of action at all. Veva wanted to vanish, but didn't happen to have that particular ability, so he instead stood and waved his dark hand, then abruptly sat again. At that cue, Charsfa began to speak in his clear, deep voice about the ways and means of Breeder Law. Not everyone in the room, even though most were Breeders, were totally familiar with the specific laws. Many had people to 'do that for them'. Both parties would usually come to an agreement and someone else would write up the paperwork and most times everyone would go home happy. All this Charsfa explained carefully and without losing anyone's interest.
"I would never presume to know the minds of every Breeder - I have never met most of you and there are many more not present today. But I will ask that a measure be reached, by means of a complete Breeder vote, that these recommendations become Law."
Charsfa read off a list of brief, informative issues. "A Healer must complete the set courses listed below, to arrive at their Degree, without necessarily doing what we normally consider Breeding," he said, his words were followed on paper by nearly one hundred thousand eyes - not everyone was in the same room of course, the speech was being broadcast to other Breeders' locales. A copy of his discourse was in their hands, all around the world.
He outlined the methods of training, briefly, of a Healer's trade - that which Veva had taken. Then he spoke of the more detailed abilities of a First Degree Breeder, whose job it was to help out couples who didn't need any extensive work, but neonatal care, birthing clinics and pediatric efforts would be the main concern. Then he went on to Second Degree, mate brokering, that would keep track of pairs and their offspring to provide potential fertility without necessarily waiting to be asked. Then Third Degree, Selection - making the bold statement of Ownership of offspring chosen by the Breeder. That seemed to satisfy a number of Owners who had gone into Breeding, it was their input that led to that decision, even though those other than Owners would be given this opportunity with that Degree. His exposition of Fourth Degree, or Term Breeding made sense to those who had been working on long generations of features, those who sought out a line for one reason only, to make it more apparent in the gene pool. Fifth Degree Breeding, called by him to be Tuned Breeding, was hailed by the Animal Masters in the audience since their whole Status almost revolved around this phenomenon of choosing for mutations and powers, rather than appearance or other such mundanities. And lastly, of course, he addressed those who had the most technical outlook for Breeders, the Sixth Degree, or Engineered Breeders. They would be allowed many ways to create their work, the tools available to them were far more advanced than those which Second or Third Degree folk worked with, and with good reason.
There were specifics which would read differently by the end of the voting, but by the time Charsfa had finished reading his paper to the assemblage of highly educated and rather highly strung individuals, he was drowned out by a chorus of applause and cheering.
~I think they like it, Chars,~ Veva announced mentally. It was the only way he could possibly have told his cousin - the wild grin on Charsfa's face at this eager acceptance of his work made it clear that the golden-colored man knew it all already.

The elaborate hair on the woman near Veva's desk showed him only that she was rich. Tacky, but rich. Not the best combination in his opinion. The dual stationed Breeder/Animal Master, whose designation now officially read "Healer First Degree/Animal Master" on his Status identification, leaned back in his office chair and let his long tail twitch. He couldn't see the tip of it, it was wrapped around the base of his chair.
If he could possibly have distracted himself from the woman's hair, he would have. As it was, he almost burst out laughing. But, she was a paying customer.
"I would really love to have one of those spotted-deer hides, you know, the kind that have those ... spots?" She said, moving her ample bosom closer to Veva as if it would have made a difference. Had he his cousin's mental powers, he would have blotted out something rude he'd say and she would stop doing that. He didn't have those types of powers, sadly, so he had to refrain from saying something utterly tactless about her actions. Though he had a child that had been Bred by his relatives, he had little more interest in women than the animals he hunted.
"Of course," Veva finally said. "I will get my assistant to help you find where to get them. I assume you mean the kind we can hunt, not the kind you have to buy in a store." Veva pressed a button on his comm pad, and somewhere else in the large building a sound alerted his son to a job.
"Absolutely!" The woman tittered, "it's such a thrill watching the hunts! I have never been on one before, it sounds so amazing."
"Dangerous work," Veva said. "And difficult. The deer have long antlers, you know," he pointed out. "They do defend themselves. There is a reason why these hides and the others you've been so fond of are expensive, Lady Tresh."
Right about then, fortunately, Nenev showed up. Nenev, while he could become an Animal Master at any given time, due to his mutations and psionics with animals, had stopped his Status rise with Membayar. His father's long tail had remained in his genes, however the striped pattern to his skin had softened down to a two-tone fade from fingertips to elbow, toes to knee, and from the back of his head toward his face. He was still a dashing young man, those two colors were a rich black and a bright red-violet.
"Father?" He said, bowing, "you have a hunting job for me?"
"Yes," Veva breathed, as the woman stopped plying herself at him, and started doing so to his son, "Lady Tresh here is looking for Spotted Deer. This season should be good for them, do you think?"
"An excellent choice," Master Nenev announced with a smile. He extended his hand and the Lady took it with another titter.
They left his office and Veva sighed, thinking to himself that if that woman used any more animal hides on her fashions people might as well go back to living in caves and dancing around fires.

(Loosely translated.)
"The Rainbow People are never going to leave," yelled one young hunter. "The islands are filling with them! We have seen them!"
Another man, who was well known for his ability to carve boats, said, "I know they have come closer than you wish to believe, Chief, and I think they are a danger to us all."
The northern tribes of Neres were in rather an uproar. The islands to the north-east of their continent had been colonized slowly but surely by these tall, scary people from the sky. Everyone knew they were from the sky - there were legends from many many generations ago that told of the stars falling. This particular tribe was in fact smart enough to remember those tales and think about them in ways other than as portents to war.
The Chief of this tribe, a squat, powerful rugged hunter, grunted and nodded sagely. "You are correct, boatmaker, I know they have come too close to our shores. What do you suggest we do? They are many, even though they only travel in small numbers."
"They are like the marsh dwelling cat, they spring upon their prey in unexpected ways," said the boatman. "But they are taking our hunting grounds! Those islands are rich in prey but they will hunt them barren! Our fishing boats can be lashed together and used to carry weapons for land hunting."
"You think you can hunt these creatures? The Rainbow men?"
The boatman was backed up by half a dozen hunters, all of whom he had escorted back and forth between Neres and the northern islands, many times. They began to cheer in their grunting, angry way.
"Then let this tribe be the vanguard of protection for our lands! Take those men you think can hunt well, leave the young to be trained by the elders. Take women - if you have wives, take them along. Settle on those islands and report to us when you've killed them."
They knew what this meant. They were to have their own land - they might eventually have their own tribe! This would be the start of their glorious tales - stories would be told of these men and their brave wives for many many generations.

"Eew," Lady Tresh said, poking at the pile of flesh as it smoldered. "What was that?"
"That, my Lady," said one of her Slaves as he brushed the ash from his hands, "was a native. They've been quite bothersome on these little fringe lands for some years. I think we've driven them back to the mainland, where they can rot for all I care."
Tresh smugly grinned. She knew that this Slave was the best. He was sturdy and handsome and knew how to praise her decisions. And he was a good hunter, too, like that fellow with the long tail. Perhaps not quite as expert in leaping from tree to ground, or across those jagged gullies, but he was surefooted and brave, and he protected her from whatever threats came along.
"There's another one," Nenev hissed, pointing with his nose, "see it?"
"The one looking the other way," Slave Garvee whispered, "yes."
Nenev glanced at the Slave and gave off a smile. "I want to see you do that trick again. Go ahead."
Garvee hunkered down, while his Lady and the Master looked on, and aimed his hands at the native hunter.
What good would a wooden and stone spear do against raw fire? Pyrokinetic energy surged through the Slave's body and out his hands, through the foliage and blasted the back of the native full force.
Fire engulfed the short, hairy creature, immediately. It didn't have the good sense to drop to the ground and try putting itself out, not that it could have, since this kind of fire would burn until Garvee stopped it. At last, with a smelly greasy cloud in the air above the fire, the native creature died without much of a sound.
Tresh realized that this was more thrilling by half than merely hunting for some spotty deer or other. But she also didn't quite have the heart - or the money - to decide to come back next season and hunt more of these native things. She decided to stick with selling hides on the fashion market, and until that fashion trend wore thin, she'd be using Veva's Travel and Hunt Service to do it.

The women who had been proudly dragged across the wide sea into the tiny island outpost frantically paddled around, knowing that the tides were against them. If they kept up against that tide, they all knew they would make it to the mainland to tell their tales of misery.
All their men, and half their own number, had been slaughtered by these Rainbow People. Some of them had tails and were spirits of the woods - some were elemental gods indeed: they had proof in their burnt-alive remains which one wise young wife decided to take along. She'd seen her husband turn from a strong fierce hunter into a greasy smelly stain, in a matter of minutes. The anger she had carried over to her companions. If they reached the mainland, they'd be able to exact their own kind of revenge. On their chief and shaman, for having sent them to that doomed place.
Two boys had been born - and both had been left behind as tribute to the Rainbow People. Three girls came along, terrified, knowing that all the tales their mothers said were true. Big dark eyes surrounded by rings of blackish-brown hair told everything.
They paddled, furious.
When the first boat in the line, which they had wisely tied together with longer ropes to keep their flotilla from being overturned by a wave, raised up a cheer that they'd seen land, everyone doubled their paddling efforts. They had done this for five days straight, night and day, against the currents.
The tide finally assisted them in reaching the main land.
Unfortunately, they did not reach their own tribe's home.
A band of oddly painted men and boys greeted the women, with spearpoints turned at them. But the women were not to be deterred. The wisest among them brought out her ex-husband, dropping him on the sands.
The locals decided that she was either a mad woman, having burnt her mate to a crisp in tribute to join their tribe, or her wild tales (barely understood for dialects on Neres were many and varied) were to be believed.
The women were brought before their shaman and his chief, and allowed in to their tribe - where they were assured they would not be sent out on freakish missions to kill the gods from the sky. They lived contented for the rest of their relatively short brutish lives, prospering in a tribe where many women suffered from disease, and becoming the foundation of a generation of storytellers.

"Your father is responsible for a most annoying change in my lifestyle," complained Legashi. Yfe brushed his comments off the same way she would a comment about the color of the sky.
"That your lifestyle becomes more complicated is a small expense, Legashi," Yfe said as she pushed her hands over his leg muscles. "It benefits all Breeders to come."
"It benefits Membayar greatly," the Owner announced. "Now if I want to maintain my Stock, I'm going to have to go for another two terms of Breeder's courses!"
Mechanically, Yfe said, "I feel ever so bad for you. Having to retrain to get the benefit of your Status. Tsk." She felt for another sore muscle, and tackled it with both her fingertips and her subtle healing power.
Legashi sat up, turning over so he could see Yfe. "Yes! That's it! I mean, why should I have to do double studies if I'm already an Owner? It's my right to keep my stock!"
"Legashi, if you don't sit down and shut up I'm liable to start using some of my harsher powers on you, and you don't want that do you." She aimed a little bit of mental pressure on the arrogant Owner to lay back on the massage table and allow her to finish her job. She pushed a bit of her brown hair out of her vibrant two-tone green/yellow eyes, and continued when he'd gone back to his proper pose on the table.
"All I'm saying is -"
"All you're saying, Legashi, is that you're too lazy to go back and learn things that you ought to know how to do anyway. You claim to be an artist, well, then why aren't genes your canvas?"
"... Just because they're yours," Legashi muttered.
Yfe pushed his foot into the air and stretched his knee, "yes, they are mine. And look at me: I have gotten a healing degree as well as a Breeding one, just to prove that I'm able."
"Maybe you're more able than most people are, Yfe," Legashi groaned.
"Oh that's rubbish!" She said, and when she could feel his muscles tense up she did something that normally she could only do to machines: she stopped the electrical impulses. He relaxed completely and then suddenly bolted upright. Straight off the table, and onto the slightly chilled floor of the clinic room.
"What was that!? I didn't ask for any weird electric treatment! That was a shock - I felt it!" He stammered, panting.
Yfe glanced away, and sighed. "Legashi, it was just me trying to smooth out your muscles with a power I'd not used on you before. I apologize if it was uncomfortable, now I know better."
"Yes, you'd better be sorry. I'm not going to allow that again. You'll be lucky if I come back here or recommend your service again!"
"You're over reacting, Legashi, as usual." Yfe sighed again. The ambiance of the massage room had been ruined by this outburst. It wasn't as if she wanted her clients - friends or otherwise - to talk at her while she worked. In fact, most of her therapy customers, Slaves to High Holders, lay there and almost fell to sleep with her ministering hands soothing away their aches. Yfe didn't need to chat while she worked, it was best to have the concentration she needed. But some people needed to blather on and on about their troubles. She was not a hairstylist, after all, and few of her customers treated her as though she were. Except for some of the Owners. Blast them into the sea, they were the loudest-mouthed coarse people she'd ever met.
Now Slave Malla, she was a pleasant surprise to find in the waiting room after Legashi had stormed out. The young girl looked up at the tall Yfe and curtseyed.
"Your pardon Breeder Yfe," Malla said politely as she'd been trained, "but my Lady wishes to make an appointment. If you could come to her homestead to treat an injury she would be most obliged."
"Oh, Malla, you don't have to use such a formal tone with me," Yfe smiled at the child, whom she had helped birth only nine summers back. "What has she done this time?"
"She was lifting a big pot for the garden, and she wouldn't let me help." Malla said, looking down, but with a little grin. "I know I'm small but I can help!"
"And I bet she'd have been best off with it, too." Yfe looked around and noticed that there were no other current customers in the waiting room, and no one signed in for a massage until tomorrow.
She set the "be back at 'rise tomorrow" sign into the door of her clinic, and strode out into the late afternoon sun of the Zovora spring. Malla had brought the family carriage with her, actually of course, it had brought her. There was room for three in the cab, which suited the driver nicely.
"Afternoon," the other Slave said, tipping his cap at the Breeder.
"And a good afternoon it will be, when I have your Lady fixed up again, eh?"
The driver groaned, and shook his head as he snapped the reigns and started the Steed pulling. "Oh, if only she'd listen to reason, BreedMistress!"
"I've heard," Yfe laughed. She had pocketed a treat for Malla in her office, which she offered with a 'shh!' sound.
Malla gave a little grin, knowing that keeping anything sweet from her driver would be tempting disaster. He had a sweet tooth that could usually spot a treat a Unit away. But this time, the wind was in their favor, and Malla got the taffy all to herself.
At last, they reached Lady Hermine's mansion. The grounds were finely crafted and beautifully maintained: by none other than the Lady herself. Her servants, Bayaran and staff always wished she'd leave at least a little work to them, but she simply kept puttering about the landscape looking for this bush to prune or that dirt to water.
She was an elderly woman, and known to be remarkably kind to her Slaves. She wasn't all that good with Bayaran, since she rarely understood what they were really good for. 'Wasn't that what she had Slaves to do?' was her usual response. Yfe searched the grounds for signs that the Lady had gotten back out of her bed - which Malla had insisted she get into - and sure enough toward the back of the Mansion there she was, bent halfway over another pot and watering it with a large pitcher. She clutched her back, and made Yfe wince.
They strode up and Yfe gave the Owner woman a glare to end all glares. Of course it had no effect upon the woman. She went right on looking for another bush or flower pot to water.
"Now I know, you're going to tell me that I ought not to be out here," she grunted as she stood straight and walked another couple steps, bent again and groaned again, "but the best medicine is work, that's what I always say."
"You sound like an old 'holder," Yfe said. "Now stand up straight and let me check that back injury. Malla told me you lifted a large," Malla pointed to the half-tilted pot which was half again the size of Malla herself, "- oh - yes, there it is. Now, look, Hermine, you've got to let your servants take some of this work off your hands. Your back is twisted even worse than the last time you did this to it."
"And I'm sure that's what you'll say next time," she sighed. Even while Yfe was working, tracing the lines of stress on nerves through the woman's spine and up her back, Hermine was busy glancing with her still-sharp eyes at her garden. She very nearly started walking off to clip a spare leaf - but Malla stopped her. Instead, the girl picked up the pruning cutters and looked for instruction in her Lady's face.
"That one, the branch which is dangling so ungracefully down from its companions." Hermine said, feeling suddenly better when Yfe had found the right spot to apply her powers, "just clip it off right at the base, where it joins the larger branch."
Yfe could almost feel the apprehension in the older Owner's mind as Malla reached up with the big clippers. She found the right branch, looked at it for what seemed an eternity, and then clipped the offending leaves. They fell to the ground and Malla picked them up, to put them with the other discarded leaves and flowers that her Lady would gather.
By the time the young girl got back to the pair, Yfe had finished her work and was applying a pressure to the Lady's lower back to push it into shape. Hermine said to the young girl, "it's a start," and Malla grinned ear to ear.

"I don't know what I'm going to do!" Malla moaned, "she's not getting up, she's just laying there... She's quite pale," she said, and Yfe could detect the seriousness in Malla's voice. She stood and excused herself from the clinic's main room, pushing past three regular appointments who looked on in a bit of shock. A real emergency? Here in Zovora?
Malla drove the carriage, it was years since she'd learned how and given the older Slave a break - he was now busy tending the Steeds. But now, Malla drove her healer into the Mansion and directly to the end of the ramps where the road let out. She grasped Yfe's hand, "she's back in the sheds, oh hurry..."
By the time they got there, Yfe knew that there was nothing her rather limited powers could do to save the old Owner. Hermine lay next to the tools near the shed, her gardening gloves on and her straw hat propped over her face for comfort. She stirred, when she heard Malla's worried voice.
"Now now... I'm not dead just yet," Hermine said. She tried to lift her hand to move her hat, but it wouldn't respond. She muttered something about that being rather an inconvenience, but then found the hat had been lifted by Malla and she was being shaded properly by other people peering down at her.
"Hermine, you're... injured. Badly. But it's an old injury and I can't..." Yfe said, trying to find the right words. "I don't know if we should move you."
"I'll die in my garden, that would be a pleasure," Hermine said, though the others gasped, her weak voice was full of humor. Limp, her other hand dropped the shears she held, and beckoned Malla near her face. "Malla, you're doing so well in the garden. I want it to be yours when it's time. I hereby free you - you should live in the mansion free of expenses until you find your way in the world. Let no one tell you different. Yfe? You have witnessed."
Yfe and Malla blinked at one another, both perhaps as surprised as they could be. Malla bent close to her Lady, and whispered in her ear something quite personal and loving. Hermine smiled, and sighed.
"I suppose that this makes payment on that last therapy visit a little sticky," Hermine sighed, and did not breathe in another breath.
Yfe was stunned. Just like that, the woman expired. The Breeder glanced back at Malla who was crying - but it was a mix of sweet and sorrow. The estate would have to be sold, most likely the Slaves would continue to serve whoever bought it. Malla wondered frantically what she'd do with herself.
"I ... I've never known anything but this! I'm only good at -" She sputtered and Yfe put her arm over the new Worker's shoulders.
"Malla, you've done nothing but look over a well crafted garden and kept it up for your Lady. Plus I've heard that you're very good with children, is that true?"
She bit her lip and said, "I... I suppose it is, there were two births recently and everyone said the children were calm near me. I ..."
"Then I would be honored if you'd help me take care of the children in the clinic, while the parents are getting their therapy. And in the mean time, I expect you'll be wanting to make arrangements with whomever buys the estate, to keep these grounds up, hum?"
Malla and Yfe looked over the huge estate's pathways of colorful flowers and shrubbery, the tall trees breaking up the flat landscape, the white and grey stones mirroring the snow-capped black mountains in the distance.
"I guess you're right. I'll... Need a bit of a rest from this, and I've got to call on the estate lawyers. I know their number, she told me not long ago."
"Then she knew this was bound to happen." Yfe stood and brushed the dirt from her knees, and said, "where do you think she'd best like to be buried, Malla? Near the center, or off to the side to look at her beautiful garden?"

Malla was quite happy when her part-time employer asked her to assist in a rather special birth. Yfe's own child was meant to be coming into the world soon enough. Though Malla didn't know the father at all, in fact Yfe didn't even seem much interested in there being a father on hand, the forty-five year old Worker felt that this was a momentous occasion.
Yfe had another Breeder on hand, though there weren't many in Zovora really. The place was still fairly small but growing, Malla knew that much because her gardening work was beginning to take in enough money that she'd be able to afford not only a business storefront, but a plot of land for herself soon!
Yfe, tall and slender, had turned onto her side, and the other Breeder insisted that she stand again.
"Veryo, I will not stand I will lay here quite certainly until I explode. Malla? Never bear children. NNNNNnng!" Yfe yelled, inadvertently. Malla didn't take her threat seriously of course. Malla wanted desperately to join the ranks of those with a file on hand at Yfe's clinic.
The Second Degree Breeder Veryo sighed, and put his hands on his patient's shoulders, turning her gently about. "Malla, would you please be so kind as to turn her feet toward the ground again?"
"I - Will - Not - Stand - UP!" Yfe said, but she was powerless with the bulk of a child come full term in her abdomen. It kicked, or moved, or perhaps her labor had started, and she helped the Breeder and Worker by sitting up and grasping her belly. "Nnnaar!"
Malla stepped up and gently tried to put her hand on Yfe's belly, and was surprised when the baby moved of its own accord, almost seeming...
"It wants to be near you," Yfe said through gritted teeth. "Now Malla dear why not stand below me and demand it come out hmn?"
"BreedMistress Yfe, you say the silliest things..." Malla said, but Breed Lord Veryo shook his head.
"No, child, I think she's serious. You do have a way with children, this one is no exception. If you had the training, I'd say you ought to become a Breeder yourself."
"Talk - later!" Yfe insisted, "I'm going to have to push now!"
The others didn't stop her, as she sat at the edge of the curved-bowl bed. The chair was suited for birthing, with a wide area to allow legs to move, and enough of a scoop that it wouldn't dump its user onto the floor, yet offer gravity as an invisible assistant.
It took rather longer than they expected to then push out a strongly colored boy child. Yfe slept soundly, exhausted, while Veryo made sure there was no internal bleeding, and kept the babe warm. Malla took the boy from the Breeder and cooed at him, getting a pleased gurgling back in response.
"He's so sweet," Malla said.
"Have you been tested, Malla?" Asked Veryo, "you would make such a good mother."
Malla nodded, "I might have a little egg waiting, some day, but I ... I haven't even found a proper father for her yet."
The Breed Lord warned gently, "Don't wait too long, Malla."
Malla knew that yes, Slaves didn't live as long as most people, usually, and she'd been born to two Slaves. Her lifestyle might offer her a little edge, since she didn't have to work if she was ill or tired - not that her dear Lady would have made any of her Slaves work under those conditions.
She bounced the baby a little, and when she saw that Yfe was awake again, she said to the child, "would you like to go back to mamma? Of course you would."
Malla gently handed the boy back to Yfe, who had abruptly forgotten how painful the birth had been, and with a huge grin said, "Dyfed, that's his name."
He had bright almost lime green skin, and darker blue-green hair that fell in a downy way over his head. His ears were slightly pointed, much smaller than his mother's were, but indicating that he possibly would have some connection to the same electric powers she did. His eyes, briefly open but now closed in contented suckling, were a brilliant sapphire color.
Malla privately made notes: how many blue-haired possibly green-skinned men with D's in their names did she recall having seen? She decided it was hopeless to try and figure out who the father might be, since Yfe was known to travel a bit now and again to her Breeding conventions and just to get away.
"Malla?" Yfe said, "if your gardening business can rest for a bit, I would love to have you on as a nursemaid." She turned to Veryo and tilted her head, "I realize that most are Healers or First Degree but she's ..."
"She is special with children, and anyone who has met her knows it. I can't argue with your choice, Yfe. As I said, if she'd the education she'd make a perfect First Degree anyway."
"Such flattery," Malla sighed. "I'll take you up on it. But when ... When we're done I would so love to open my own store. Do you think that your payment could help me?"
"I know just the place in town," Yfe grinned.

Dyfed sat near his fireplace and listened to the music playing. A superb recording, made many years back in the H'lan Valley. The birds, he thought, would be great to have in a homestead - but they were wild and he never wanted to remove a wild animal from its setting. That would be a cruelty he couldn't bear.
Always a soft hearted individual, Dyfed watched the snow outside falling, while the songs of tropical marshlands filled his den.
Though Dyfed was raised almost exclusively by his mother and her friends, he took mostly after his father. He knew that: his powers were geared toward the skies and land, rather than to people or artificial things.
Apparently, way back in his mother's side of the family, there had been a weathershaper or two. His mother's power of electric control extended into the weather spectrum far easier than the mechanical side, and his interests lay so far away from her own Breeding.
Dyfed loved maps, enjoyed looking at them for hours. There was one huge map on his den's wall, the world as seen from above when the Colonists had arrived. He wanted to make changes to it: there had been an earthquake two decades before his birth that opened a chasm and exposed a river to the surface, in Polaen. The long river that snaked through Curra already swelled up, and made for an exceptionally good trade route.
He wanted to see it for himself. Having grown up on Zerin and remaining there most of his current forty years, Dyfed was aching for something else. Something to call his own. He'd passed the Membayar exams with the typical ease his mother's family did, but he would hope for more Land to hold. Perhaps he'd... Go out exploring?
The Master leaned back in his chair, sinking deeply into thought as well as the plump cushions. Dare he think that he, having led a comfortable and protected life so far, would be able to go out and forage about? Plop down a foundation for a Homestead in some far-off Area? So far, his maps were merely a hobby, since his job relied upon the dealings of higher Status and stock trades. He was quite good with numbers, as an accountant for Auction houses and personal management he was on a par with the best historically. But... His true love was more fanciful than numbers on a screen or written in boxes. Perhaps his true love was more colorful than the people he worked with, the land that called to his hands might be it...
Trilling Tether birds woke him - the recording had started over, and the bright sounds of their mating calls lured him out of his warm comfortable seat.
Outside, the snow continued to fall. But he knew that on the Land of Tana, there was a beautiful valley where precious few Zekirans had stepped foot. Where only one man, Master Tankhle, had braved conditions unknown to plop down his recording unit and gather these wonderful sounds for all to hear.
If he did go somewhere uninhabited, Dyfed knew his powers would be getting a work out. Perhaps it would be best to practice before leaving for some unknown destination. Exploration was not in vogue at the moment - he could hardly expect to find good outfitters that could estimate his needs.
He wanted to speak to the composer, Master Tankhle, to find out how he got where he did, to record this beautiful music.
The snow blanketed the land outside, in the morning. After a good night's rest, Master Dyfed took stock. He did still want to find a place in H'lan, or perhaps just start wandering. But the desire to meet or at least contact the composer was stronger at the moment, so he sat down and searched through the world communication network.
The Master was located within a few minutes! Dyfed sighed when he realized that his contact number was merely the recording studio's, but it was a start.
He placed the call to the studio, which was on Tana - that was a bonus, since that was where he'd have to go eventually. Leaving a message, chiding himself for not automatically remembering that Tana would be waking up several hours after his call.
That left him to pace about his den and home for ... what, five hours? Six? Oh the maddening curse of inspiration! He wanted to find out what he'd be needing right now of course. But, perhaps... He ought to settle with his practice for the day.
Now... How to start? He had been tested and found for certain working powers. Since he hadn't made his living using them, they were all but untrained. His mother insisted the amount of telepathy she'd passed on to him be trained and kept working - all her relatives would simply die if they knew a son of hers had allowed his ability to lapse.
He didn't know of anyone to ask for training assistance. There must be someone. Again he cast his eyes toward his communication room and did a search. Tapping his green fingers against his chin, Dyfed wondered. What to look for exactly? Mutations? He checked, and there were some, but he realized that his was not a mutation so much as an ability. He checked the Breeder's pages, and promptly found what he was looking for.
A boldfaced advertisement: High Master Jark's Environmental Training. Could it really be this easy?
Of course not. The office was all the way across Zerin, in the high Stetil mountains. The Zovora ridges were tall to him, but he'd flown over the huge white capped frozen Stetil peaks. They were quite... Impressive. He knew that H'lan was a deep valley between sharply cut mountains. Perhaps swamp training, then? No. No. It would be silly to stop and switch now.
It was a good thing he'd decided to do this during the resting days. He checked the weather reports for Stetil, and found that even though it was in fact snowing, it wasn't snowing so hard that a transport couldn't be found. Because he was a good Membayar at heart, he made appointments for both the Training agency, and the transportation. Then he arranged for one or two of his Bayaran to keep his own appointments.
One brilliant thing he always did, as a Membayar, was to take on Bonds only when their skills could be useful in lieu of his own. It meant he could take time away from the office and trust it to people who knew what they were doing, as well as keep the Bayaran involved in their own well being. If they completed a task with flair and a show of ability, they would be properly - financially - rewarded. If they performed adequately, no reward of course. Dyfed didn't Bond or hire people who couldn't perform at least adequately.
Now his task was to gear himself up for this training. What would it take? Patience, and... he couldn't even guess.

When Dyfed reached the summit, along side three other participants in the elemental training course, he was rather surprised to see that High Master Jark was - well - hardly dressed for the weather or climate outside. The big trail leading up to the estate in Stetil's snow blasted mountains was clear of debris but usually dusted with a layer of snow. Dyfed and the others dropped their supplies and satchels, and rested mostly with heaving chests and sweat showing on their varied brows.
"Well what have we here?" Said a voice, manly but with a tinge of color that hinted he was not at all interested in being masculine. "A Land Holder, a stray Animal Lord, a Slave sent by her High Master, and what's this? A Membayar... Hmn... Don't see too many Membayar managing to turn up here. No, not often at all."
Dyfed didn't know whether to be offended or pleased. He was breaking an unspoken rule about Membayar being quite boring, that he knew already. But if he was being offered a challenge, Dyfed wasn't certain. High Master Jark was for all the world wearing a slender silken dress of sorts, in a complimentary color to his pale violet skin. His blue-black hair was cut and styled sharply over his handsome face, and faintly grey-blue eyes peered out below that rakish hair. He swished by the other three, and stopped at Dyfed.
"Do you think your day job will miss you if you can handle this course, sweet Bonder?" Jark gently mocked. The Slave nearby was blushing horribly, she wasn't sure what to make of this behavior.
"I think my day job will be fine all by itself, High Master. I'm curious though - how is it you are able to wear this... lovely concoction of silk and lace in weather such as this?"
Dyfed waved his heavily gloved hand at the doorway which still had turbulent waves of snow drifting past it. The door was glass, but so thick that it would only let the barest hint of chill through.
"Why, that's how I got into this business, my sweet Membayar, survival of the finest of course."
The Animal Master present cleared his throat, and Jark got down to that business soon enough. He straightened his gown and strode with a tall sort of arrogance toward an inner hallway. "Through this portal, friends, is your training course agreement and waiver. Now that we have a Membayar present I'm sure that everyone will want him to look over their contracts..."
Jark tittered a little, and then sobered again. The contracts basically outlined that the service was to be provided only to those people who could prove they had some kind of psionic ability or mutation which allowed them to adjust to a condition environmentally. That condition satisfied, the waiver made it quite clear that while in the High Master's presence they were protected from all kinds of awful events, but the moment they strayed or some how broke their contact with him, they were subject to the whim of nature. And Jark wasn't responsible for nature - merely getting through it.
Lawgiver that he was, Dyfed looked at the contract and decided that it was fair. Perhaps a little wordy, something that the Slave present was having trouble with.
"Your HighMaster signed an electronic agreement already," said the High Master to Slave Garna. She nodded, signed her name to the bottom of the page, and handed it back to Jark. The Free Holder was a bit more hesitant.
"How do I know you're not just going to send us out into the wilderness and not come back?" He asked.
"Because that's the final test, not the start of the course, good sir," Jark smirked. "By the end of the training I expect you'll want to be out from my clutches and on your own. The only way out of here of course is to run back down the mountainside, and if there's no transport waiting for you at the bottom of the hill, you'd have to hike more than thirty miles to the nearest rest stop. And frankly," he said with a grin, "I expect you to be able to do so when I'm finished working with you."
He flipped his scarf over his shoulder and leaned back, waiting for the Free Holder to sign, as Dyfed and the Animal Lord had finished already.
When they had all gotten the formalities out of the way, and a cadre of Slaves had taken their gear on to their quarters, the foursome and their strange host were served hot tea and biscuits, as they walked toward another portion of the estate.
"Through there are the preparation rooms and kitchen, as well as a standard dining hall. I don't often entertain but if you wish to utilize my estate for the duration you should feel free. Warn the staff and buy your own food, is all I ask." Jark walked ahead a bit, his hips swishing the way that he most thought would get attention. He got it all right: the FreeHolder rolled his eyes and almost laughed when the Slave started emulating him - she stopped quickly the moment she thought she might be discovered, giving Dyfed the idea that she was a rather sharp girl.
They passed by the hallway containing the half dozen barracks - they sounded much more Spartan than they really were, they were fully prepared rooms with bed, table, bath and dressing counter, all the amenities, and for every two rooms there was one Slave or Bayaran for food service or other such things. It wasn't nearly as overdone or ostentatious as a hotel or fine breakfast estate, but it was more than adequate for their needs.
Then Jark showed off a line of clothing which they were meant to be wearing for their training. "They can be tailored if we do not have everything you require," Jark said while looking over the snugly fitting clothing. "But there will be an extra fee."
"Of course," said the Animal Lord, who had a short thick tail.
"Oh, we have tailed outfits," Jark said, nodding toward a rack with clothing for multiple-arms, extra wide, and yes, all sizes and lengths of tails.
When they had seen this, and made mental notes about which rack they'd likely have to reach for when the time came, Jark led the foursome to a double door. He threw the doors open with a wide motion of his arms and lights came on in the massive room.
"And this," he said in a hush, "is the training room."
It was a room bigger than most people's whole neighborhoods, it seemed. There were nozzles in the ceiling, fans set into the walls, some odd outlines on the floor which led the Slave to believe they were to be running obstacle courses in addition to their training. She was mostly right.
The Free Holder stood with his mouth open until Dyfed shut it for him with a careful motion.
"Well you didn't think I'd be dragging you lot into the freezing snow did you?" Jark laughed, "after all, your requests said something about your requirements. This room has been fitted to provide scorching sun, burning wind, freezing rain, dry and arid conditions, high and low pressure... Anything your hearts desire to test. I mean, if you want to go out there, feel free, but remember, that waiver states clearly that you'd be out of my jurisdiction unless I was with you the whole time."
Eventually, they settled down to their routine. The four clients selected their clothing from the racks, it seemed that Dyfed and Garna were most satisfied with how they looked and felt in the all-slate colored suits. The Animal Lord and Free Holder both seemed to be less comfortable, but for very different reasons. The Beastlord's tail pinched a bit, and the Free Holder, well, he was trying to fit in a group of what he thought were far more attractive people than he.
"We can start with the fitness for extremes," Jark announced the next morning. Garna was most suited to hot and dry conditions, but she could also produce a bit of heat herself, that feature was one that her High Master wanted to exploit, to bring her on extended trips rather like a human space heater. Her range and level of heat ability would be trained up.
Beast Lord Kvaal had it in his head to learn to swim and possibly survive in deep cold, Jark suggested he might be best off in low-pressure or high altitude instead. "I noticed that you were hardly panting and heaving, like the other three, when you arrived," Jark commented. Suddenly Kvaal realized that he was right - here they were at some hugely amazing altitude and he wasn't experiencing the slightest bit of trouble because of it. He changed his mind about the water thing almost with relief.
Most Zekirans were frightfully low on body fat. And of course, since the oceans were barely salty there was very little buoyancy. Precious few Zekiran people wanted to step foot in water more than a few spans deep. He got off easy.
"Holder Lalvey... I see certain conditions in your future... Dark, cold, humid ones. What say you to a cavern run?" Jark asked, and Lalvey smiled.
"I've got Land right near a huge bat cave. I've been meaning to explore it and Hold on to it, if I can. I'm up for that."
"Good!" Jark exploded with false glee, and moved on to Dyfed. "Now you... You..." He walked slowly around the Membayar until stopping to his side. "Electrical storms. Rain, and sleet? Perhaps sticky, very sticky. Humidity is at your command, my friend. What's that other thing I sense in you?"
"Ground senses, I think," Dyfed answered. The sultry tone of his trainer hadn't gotten to him yet, and obviously that was why Jark kept using it with him. Perhaps he thought they'd be getting together later. Perhaps they would, but certainly not while Dyfed was paying the man!
"Hmmmmm, yes, I'll have to note that." Jark moved his eyes around the room and decided upon a course of action. "While I'm working with you, Garna, I expect you three to be examining the controls of the sub-rooms. Go ahead - but don't try using any of them yet. I'll show you."
The sunlamps and fans started up and the trio of men escaped the conditions of an arid desert within moments. It was a good thing too, because none of them felt up to surviving that!
There were two other rooms, off to one side with a hallway leading back up to the other side of the estate. On one side apparently was a deep-freeze or cavern simulator, and the other was a moisture and altitude chamber.
"I'll be going in here," Said Kvaal, looking at the altitude area. "I think you're going to want both this one and the main room, eh Master Dyfed?"
"That's probably on the agenda... Does he seem a bit..."
"Taken with you?" Kvaal laughed as the Free Holder stifled a smirk
"I was going to say rough with the Slave," Dyfed groaned, "but yes, I'd noticed that bit too."
"It's none of our business," Free Holder Lalvey muttered. "He did seem a bit curt. She's a nice girl, it looks like."
"And trustable, her High Master's got her out from Kiran, she said before you got on the lift." Kvaal said.
"Oh? Where?" Asked Dyfed, having relatives there. The answer was a place he'd never heard of, but even if he had, a moment later it didn't matter if someone was speaking or not.
A howling wind filled the big chamber nearby, and all three of them looked up, watching through an observation window as Garva tackled a stiff breeze. There were sensors connected to her suit, sticking out of the floor's odd boxes. Apparently, she was starting to force her body heat into the air, until she tired and Jark had to shut off the equipment.
"Fifteen spans," Jark said, with the first hint at warmth in his voice for the girl, "that's quite impressive, and you say you've not done that particular test of wills before?"
Panting, but grinning madly, the Slave said, "no High Master, I haven't."
"Then your dear High Master will love you to pieces when he hears how you're going to progress. Come along. We'll watch the boys now."
The other men got their chance to work their odd personal powers in the main room too, and finally - it seemed that Jark was always saving Dyfed for last - the Membayar was taken in and had sensors applied to the slicksuit. Slender wires hung in the air around him, all through the big room.
"You've never done this before, have you?" Jark said, smiling.
"No, but I remember as a young boy sneaking outside during a hailstorm and not getting too beat up in it."
"Try and concentrate on what your senses pick up," Jark said as he turned to use the control panel. He stepped into the nook where all the room's wonders were set up, at the touch of a button he had a slowly kicking wind brewing in the big room. He turned the temperature down first, then up.
"Close your eyes, Master Dyfed," Jark said loudly, and Dyfed did as he was told. This was all in the interest of gaining enough experience to head off to H'lan. All he really expected was for Jark to suddenly be standing there about to kiss him or something. He resisted a laugh, and then felt an odd sensation.
Artificial rain, pelting his skin. He kept his eyes closed, but then ... Dyfed could feel where the rain started. Could actually sense that it was wholly artificial, and he wanted to keep himself dry.
He let his power work for the first time consciously. When he was quite young, his mother warned him against standing in the rain. But Dyfed now kept a strange shimmering shield around himself, the rain water seemed to evaporate as it struck the air around him. Eyes still closed, then, he felt the temperature change dramatically. Hot and wet? Ah - this would be H'lan's atmosphere for certain.
The muggy stuff was a bit harder to work with, because it wasn't all in one piece like a rain drop. But soon enough, within a few minutes of hard mental work, Dyfed discovered to his delight that he could manipulate the wetness until it pooled around him at a distance. That was apparently enough for one day, as Jark called the experiment and testing over for the evening.
A large meal was served for all of his clients - Garna included - after everyone was bathed and clothed in their off-training outfits. This went on for another three solid days.
At last, then, with Garva apparently being the most wildly successful of the group, Jark announced that they had graduated their first training session. And, that if they wanted a challenge, they could come back at a discounted rate for any further - more extensive - work outs.
Over their last meal together, the group congratulated one another, and Dyfed doted upon Garna. How useful her powers were, and how strong! She got it into her head that she might even be good enough to focus her energies and become a body guard instead of just a convenience piece. She would talk to her High Master about it, when she got back home.
They would be leaving in the morning, heading back down the mountain side to the waiting transportation, which would take them to one of three stops leaving for other parts of the world. But that night, of course, Jark visited Dyfed in his private barrack.
"And so you're off to your big adventure now?" Jark asked. He was being sweet, voice low and sultry, and he'd dressed in an utterly inappropriate lacy shawl.
"Perhaps in the Spring. I've done a little research while I was here, about the Valley I intend to see. The weather is better than what you could throw at me here, I don't need to be challenged the whole time I'm away from my comfortable Homestead."
"No, no of course not!" Jark said. He was getting rather close to Dyfed who didn't exactly move him away.
"I've been meaning to ask, though," Dyfed said, perking Jark's attention up. He disappointed him slightly by saying, "how is it you've been able to move through everything you put us through, and more? I mean, the dress, the snow..."
"Oh that," Jark said, "It's nothing. I was born this way. I can barely feel heat, cold doesn't get to me, and frankly between you and me, I can also breathe under water."
Dyfed blinked, "... I don't want to know how you found that out!"
"Oh, I think you do..." Jark said, purring and sliding up next to the Membayar.
Dyfed realized that he didn't have an heir to give his family yet. And at this rate, he'd have to bloody adopt one.
"Okay, all right, I'll bite." He said, draping his arm over the shoulder nearest him.
"Will you?" Exclaimed the odd pale man beside him, a little too excited.

"I wish you'd let me handle her," Jark said, looking over his shoulder at the woman who had handed them their baggage.
"You don't like women - I figured I'd be doing you a favor." Over the years, it had become obvious that when Dyfed thought he was somewhat abusive toward Slaves, it had actually been because Garna was a woman.
"Father! Papa!" Their 'son' Sefyn ran from the steedway to the pair of men. "You're back! Did you bring me anything!?"
"Did you bring your manners?" Jark asked, and though the boy wasn't his own, he was Dyfed's heir brought on by questing his Breeder family members and arranging something, Sefyn responded by calming down and straightening up.
"Yes, papa, I'm sorry. I had the coach brought, I thought you would both like the ride home."
"I know I would," Dyfed said, tussling his son's short cropped brown-green hair. "Come on, Jark, give him a break. We've been gone almost a month."
"And a month is forever for a young boy, I know," Jark said, "so how is our little High Master?"
"I haven't passed the exams yet, papa," Sefyn said, looking away but more in annoyance than from guilt. "I mean, I've got three more years of studying."
"Well, let's talk about that later," Dyfed suggested. "We did bring you something. It's a bit fragile so you'll have to open it at home."
They traveled in the High Master's coach, and Jark had to admit that he liked the sunny climate there in Zovora much better than the constant snow fall or overcast of the Stetil mountains. He had his huge estate and booming training business of course, but in the twenty some years Jark and Dyfed had known one another he had taken on more and more outland travels to show his students that their labors wouldn't go unused.
And Membayar Dyfed was shortly to become High Master Dyfed. But that would wait just a few moments more.
When they arrived to Dyfed's small comfortable homestead Sefyn almost bounded over himself trying to get to the den where they would always open little gifties from journeys like the one his fathers had just embarked upon.
This time it wasn't in a box, it was more a scroll of something. Sefyn wondered if it was an image or a...
"A map?" He said, hushed. He looked it over. It was a beautiful hand-drawn topographical map, with colorful indicators of other items like ... plant life? A water hole? Bare cliffs? He peered at the map and saw a small marking on one side, near the edge of a trail marking.
"Well, that's my part," Dyfed admitted as his heir gazed at his handiwork. "Your papa has the other part."
Sefyn took the other scroll, which did have an image on it. A photograph of... "Father?"
"Sefyn, take a look at your first Hold," Dyfed said, grinning as widely as Jark. They had assembled a shaped stone and brick shelter among the cliffs of H'lan Valley. It was an unobtrusive observation deck fit with some provisions and living quarters enough for four people.
Of course it would help that the boy had inherited most of his father's water shaping ability, and all of his mother's plant manipulation power. It would be a perfect hideout for the boy - but first he had to earn it in his studies.
It took less than a year of those three he claimed to need, before he tackled his High Holder testing and made his fathers proud.

The blaze took days to control, even with experienced water-summoners and more conventional fire fighting techniques. Sefyn was on hand to help control the smaller fires with what little he could muster of his water power, he wasn't like that other guy who seemed to dance on the flames and douse things just by looking at them funny. Everyone was rather in awe of that guy.
The ashes in the sky slowly dropped to the ground with the aid of some weathershaping. At least two dozen of the world's strongest 'shapers had been requested to help, and they came willingly. This was a test of their skills, as well as the opportunity to meet and greet one another the way they hadn't been able to before.
Some were Breeders, a couple Animal Lords, an Owner, and even one rare Membayar, the rest were either Holders or High Holders. Sefyn was totally outclassed, or so he thought, by this group.
Out from the burnt remains of a huge old-growth tree came a woman. Well, Sefyn realized she was little more than a teenager. Her big brown-red eyes shone brightly against the ash and dirt on her skin - which might have been red-colored but today it was obscured by a sheen of wet grime. Her hair was lighter bronze, a pretty metallic glimmer could still be seen even through the mess covering it.
"I ... I couldn't protect the trees," she said, her voice was scratchy like everything around them. Sefyn looked around with his eyes, didn't see anyone else close by.
"Well, it was a big fire, no one could be expected to do that. ... I wish I'd known you were there, though, I could have helped you with this one." He placed his hand on the charred bark of the big tree. It would have towered hundreds of spans into the air, it was nearly twelve wide. "There is still a little life in this one, though, I think you kept it alive a little bit."
"Really?" The girl said, and reached out to touch Sefyn as though in a dream. She was clearly traumatized by all this.
"Did ... did someone bring you here? To help?" Sefyn asked, not seeing any Status indication on her outfit - not that you'd be able to see it among the grit and ashes.
The girl's eyes widened. "No... Oh - no I'm not supposed to be here... Not with people." She made to escape, but Sefyn stepped into her way and gently held her arm with his strong hand.
"Don't go... Are you... well, are you a renegade Slave?"
She shook her head. But she didn't look up either. "My parents are. I can't stay! I have to go, all those people will want to know who I am and -" She was getting panicky, so Sefyn glanced about, saw that there were drinks being served and towels passed out at the big hover-van that brought a number of people up there. Sefyn's private vehicle (there were no Steeds endangered by this venture - all the people there had been brought by motor driven vehicles) waited with a driver. He'd be the only one to know.
"Are your parents nearby?" Sefyn asked. She nodded - she behaved so like a Slave already, but he knew she'd rather not be. "And do they have powers to help the fire fighting?"
"I ... no, I am the only one."
"How old are you, and..." Sefyn smiled and laughed, "what's your name by the way?"
The girl introduced herself as Mariz, thirteen year old daughter of Zem and Raia. They had been escapees for nearly two decades, out in the Ka forests where this huge blaze went up. The storm that sparked it had all but passed by the time the weathershapers got there.
"Are they all right? Your parents?"
Mariz nodded, and made a little glance to the side behind her. There were two utterly grimy people, they had obviously been working hard to keep their small hovel intact. It hadn't worked very well.
"Mariz, bring your parents along. Just go with it, I promise you it'll be worth it when we're through."
She summoned them, their wide eyes and slightly angry looks paled slowly when they realized that not one of the people nearby knew who they were. They'd been gone for so long... Since only the woman Raia had a bit of plant sensing neither of them were really pursued by their old Owner, they had been allowed to live in peace.
Something deep in the back of Sefyn's mind, his ancestry, seemed to remind him that his ancestress would have done the same thing.
He told them to do as he asked, and all would be very well rewarded soon enough. They went right up to the refreshments area, doused each other in chilled water to get most of the dirt and ash off, and finally strode right up to Sefyn's coach.
"This land needs a little work," he announced, "but soon enough I think it'll be healthy. And look at it all, it's cleared enough for homesteads and shops. There's even a road now," he indicated the huge trail of flattened shrubbery that was made when the vehicles all ploughed their way through the area.
"Why is he speaking so loud?" Asked Zem, but his wife shushed him with a grin.
They heard the mutterings - even the fire fighters knew that though the land was covered in grey and muck right now, that was a tremendous boon for growing crops at a later date. Trees and vines, grapes? The possibilities were endless.
The trio got into the van, and though the Bayaran driver looked them over with interest he said nothing. His Master was well equipped to deal with strays like himself, so he knew better than to say anything. Renegades now, was it? Well, they'd soon be something else entirely, like himself.
On the way back to their temporary home, a big shared mansion which served the firefighters as well as many travelers along its two-hundred year history, Sefyn got the story from his new little friends. They'd run away from a neglectful Owner, who had wanted to split the Slave pair up even though they had been legally wed by their prior Holder. Usually the convention was to keep them together, socially as well as emotionally it worked best, and Sefyn knew that. He'd seen it close up, as his fathers bickered about which Slaves to sell off that year or which to buy up. 'Can't have them, they come as a pair and we only need one,' or 'couldn't we just get the brother instead of the pair?' Mostly it was Papa talking then.
He wouldn't be too pleased. But then, it wasn't much of his business now that Sefyn had broken out on his own business and made a bit of a name for himself among horticulturists. Dear passed-away Grandmama Yfe's best friend and companion to Dyfed had been one, apparently, and the skills just seemed to pass right along. Especially what with Sefyn being encouraged to get out and stretch his powers out to their maximum.
"I'll bet you haven't been tested yet," Sefyn said of Mariz. He looked at her parents. They were middle aged, their daughter probably a pleasant surprise after years of being paired together. Mariz looked and acted more mature than her short life would indicate, but ... Sefyn found himself hoping that she held on to her childhood while she could. And after all, he'd be offering her a real one - not one of hiding in the shadows and lurking in the woods!

"I swear couldn't you see this one coming?" Papa Jark said, rolling his eyes. "What next? Little herds of the creatures?"
"Papa, she's -"
"She's obviously perfectly matched for him, Jark, don't start with that. Just because you don't like women and couldn't sire a child if you wanted to you've got to act like this?"
"You didn't have to go there," Jark pouted, and flounced away to another part of the mansion.
Mariz, now just barely twenty, gazed at Sefyn for approval. She wasn't sure what to make of his parents. He'd rather kept her and her family a bit of a secret while he helped them establish a Hold in the Ka ashlands. As long as he kept their secret they'd be safe - and he had no intention of saying a word. Especially not to his fathers!
After being brought to a Breeder's for the first time, Mariz was noted as a plant-manipulator, with a bit of an odd mental clouding power thrown in - perhaps her parents didn't even know it was there. Though the Breeder was curious, the look that Sefyn - along with the dec of plat he handed her - made sure that she wouldn't ask too many questions about where a teenaged girl had just shown up on a doorstep all of a sudden. There were dozens of untested and unBred homesteads scattered everywhere one looked, few and far between in the higher reaches, but surely a population of them had never even been exposed to real Zekiran society.
Mariz's appearance was pleasing, not remarkable. She had lightish red skin, dappled here and there with darker orange markings - which Sefyn thought to be very pretty on her. Her hair was extremely shiny in the sunlight, a rich bronze metallic shade that caught every hint of light. She behaved herself as a more well-trained Slave would, but people presumed that was because she was a very attentive girl and didn't want to miss anything that her big eyes could see. She learned quickly, but had her limits. She wasn't very good at maths, but didn't really require it for what she wanted to do. She and Sefyn would become known as a Homesteading consultation pair. They helped build, where trees and good ground were involved, it was made quite easy by their combined power.
So when they became lovers, no one doubted that if Mariz was even slightly fertile - which she was - they would some day have a wonderful child who might just exceed anyone's expectations.

That child was named Zafram. She was a pale peachy color, with lovely dots of yellow and red across her arms and shoulders. She held herself proudly, after all she was the daughter of the premier plant shaping businessfolk of the area! Her eyes were dark, almost black with a bit of brown dancing through them, and her hair was a wild mess of metallic shaded hazel green. She looked as though she belonged in the woods - a lovely dryad wild and comfortable only among the leaves.
She nestled into her wooden nook, and watched her woods. Something was going on, just beyond her Holdings, and when she realized what it was, she sprang back into action.
The Steed races were coming through! Since just after her birth, the world-wide Steeding championship races were being held. Every eight years, the big circuit cut a swath of betting and bonding through every Area of the world. Though tiny towns like her own Astan would get a bit of action, this year it seemed it was much bigger than normal. There would be people to host, parties to give, and most of all, showing off to do.
Zafram put her hands to the trunk of the gigantic redwood she had lived in or near for most of her childhood, and asked it to please tell her how many people were landing their Steeds on the grassy glens nearby.
Amazingly to anyone but her family, the tree responded. In an almost out-of-body experience, Zafram saw three dozen Steed company workers begin setting up their camp.
They were doing so on her land, with rather less permission than she'd given. She didn't much mind, but they ought to be paying their way, right? Of course. So she donned a more formal sundress and sandals, and headed quickly down her plot of land toward the brightly colored tents and people.
When she was in sight of the camp, one of the sturdy workers lifted his arm and waved, calling, "heyo! Come to help out?"
As Zafram drew near enough to speak comfortably, she smiled patiently at the man and asked, "who hired you to set up here?"
"Eh? Oh, that'd be High Master Quin. He's in the black, by the dappled Steed." Suddenly the man caught on and stopped lashing a pole down. His companions were about to chide him, but his hand waved in the air as a warning stopped them from saying anything stupid. Zafram neared the tall painfully overdressed man and cleared her throat.
"Now now I hardly have the time to entertain children, please head to your-" He started, but with a serious look Zafram stopped him.
"And do you have a permit signed by myself to build upon my Holdings, sir? While I respect your work, and I certainly won't stop your people from finishing their tasks," Zafram said with a tiny but noticeable smile, "your Steeds will be using my grassland as a stomping ground, and I'd far rather have known in advance. I do have a modest Hold in the hills nearby, and I would be happy to host any events you have planned, but you really - really - ought to have given me some warning."
To his credit, Quin didn't say something inane like 'oh, so this is your Holding?' but instead he did look annoyingly perturbed to hear this news. As if he didn't, as a Holder, know and respect the rights of those Holders everywhere. He'd neglected to learn whether someone actually Held this area. He'd assumed it was empty, no one had been there in the past.
He hemmed and hawed of course, but never tried to back out of his position as a race coordinator. Abruptly, he arranged for someone to bring a standard contract form, which Zafram pleasantly agreed to sign. So long as her Lands were intact at the end, and any damages were cleaned up by Quin's company, his only fee would be to send a modest amount to the High Mistress' accounts.
The "showing off" part of Zafram's timetable had come and gone. Now there were parties to plan.

"Have you been to the Astan Steed deck?" Someone asked, and his companion shook her head. "Well you must go. I swear it is absolutely perfect to watch this race course! I got in early, last Circuit, and I'm hoping for a spot this year."
Conversations quite like that one were spreading through Astan and the racing circuits. The big wooded area was slowly but surely becoming known as a Steeding paradise, if only for the racing and training. No one really knew how many Steeds would be able to graze properly on the meager grasslands between tracts of huge forests.
Up on the hills, where the last break in the woods showed a brilliant green strip designed for racing and boarding Steeds of any type, was the Observation deck. Zafram had expanded greatly on her smallish estate, attracting Animal Masters and Holders year round to discuss the next year or decade's circuit.
Zafram was an ideal hostess for such things, though her reputation was as a quiet yet sharp-tongued woman. She did not bet on races, at least no one in her group had seen her do so. Her Bayaran were allowed a certain stipend away from their debt when the Circuit flew through her Estate, and she often awarded her best behaved Slaves a little betting money as well. But her favorite activity was hosting elaborate parties.
Somehow she could get the spring flowers to bloom in deepest winter, coax water from what appeared to be bare rock, and it was almost as if she could make music out of the wind through trees. When the Steeding left the area, the village of Astan would become more like its old self - no more than fifty people during the off season blossomed into thousands overnight and vanished again within a week.
This ritual was repeated five times before Zafram met a young Worker and his half-hearted attempt at a Steed entry.
He'd somehow won the sorry creature in a contest or a bet, but naturally as a Worker he was just about ready to bond into Bayaran keeping it fed and sheltered. One can't keep a Steed in an apartment, really.
The edgy and wide-eyed look on the Worker's face compelled Zafram to almost chase him through a crowd. Others were laughing at him as he tied on what appeared to be home-made tack and bridle to his semi-cooperative Steed. The Steed herself was out of her prime by several years, but far from old. Her feathers were still coming in strongly, and she had all the spunk of most younger Steeds - just in a more or less underfed way.
"Why don't you just sell the old nag!" Called someone, echoed by another cruel taunt of "because she's still probably worth more than he is!" And laughter followed.
Zafram pushed her brows together and scowled. This was not a good way to start a race season. She promptly went to the betting station and put two hundred creds on the 'old nag'. At the odds she was currently running, Zafram would be able to afford another whole plot of land out here, if the Steed could even place. But that wasn't an option, was it?
The party goers up in the observation deck party house wondered where their usually genial hostess was. They spotted her with spy glasses, she was wandering up and down nervously near the starting gates of the race.
"She's... got a betting receipt in her hand," said someone. They were stunned. Was this true? Could it be that the High Mistress who simply never bet was down there among the rabble ... really?
The groups up there managed to locate the bet she'd made and were even more confounded. What in the world was she thinking? Surely she knew better than to blow any money on that half-tamed ... "Well it's her money," someone sighed as the race was announced. The Steeds and their riders were shown to the gates along with cheering for each as per their popularity among the crowd.
The announcers of the race were stunned when they saw the amounts of money being put on different Steeds. Normally there would be a bunch of contenders, which this race had twelve, a clear winner and placing group, which there were three, and a clear - very clear - losing bunch. This time there was one clear loser, and that was Kelkey's Toss the Bones. Ridden by, none other than Kelkey.
Kelkey was a lean man now, because he'd often had to go without proper meals just to keep his Steed and to take her to races at all. But he was built to be muscular, and still had a wiry strength to him - especially his hands, which were used to working knots and textiles rather than holding reins. He was clearly unstable on the Steed's back, he wasn't a professional rider in the slightest. His blackish-grey skin was marred with scars, some new which he'd obviously gotten in the time he'd had Toss the Bones. He'd tied his silver hair back into a rough tail, but it would come loose during the race. He didn't wear expensive silks for the race, he had none.
He was up against fifteen or more professionals - even though a portion of them were Slaves, at least they had the benefit of training and real food now and again. There was only one other Worker in the bunch, and he wasn't in nearly as poor condition as Kelkey. He'd been hired on because of his slight tuning for Steed powers, he'd surely become an Animal Master if he won this race.
The trio of 'best in the pack' gazed at this ... loser... and sneered to one another. If anyone would be passing their noses it would be only another year before any one of them would get their title back anyway. Kelkey obviously wasn't a serious threat.
When Kelkey's Toss the Bones was announced, there was a spattering of polite applause and a riot of laughter. Kelkey obviously almost ran out of the race right there, but by this time, his pearlescent white Steed with golden tipped wings had gotten herself in the mood to race.
Somehow, perhaps it was a long-latent telepathy creeping up to the top of Zafram's mind, or perhaps it was just that she was standing among Workers and Bayaran and Slaves wearing a formal party dress and no hat to shield her from the sun, Kelkey turned to see Zafram clutching a betting ticket.
Of course he knew who she was, her face appeared on the viddies televising the event all smiles and polite bashful looks. Come to the Astan Betting Deck. Her voice was in his mind, whether it was imagined or not. She mouthed the words, 'I've bet on you - do well!' but all Kelkey heard was the blast of the starting horn.
"We've got ourselves a race!" Called one announcer. "Proud Walking Darkness is in the lead on the ground, his pacing as usual is going to be the quickest among this bunch." He listed off several others, until the second announcer broke in.
"There seems to be something a bit amiss with that ... last Steed entered. Toss the Bones is um, well, she seems to be trying to use a vertical take-off to start her race!"
"That is rather odd, isn't it?"
Toss the Bones had not begun running frantically with the whole rest of the Steeds to get speed for lifting off. The course was a relatively short one, but it was over a steep hillside and sharp cliffs near the middle. A fall there would mean sure death for a rider. There was precious little running space left for the half dozen Steeds who hadn't gotten into the air yet, the rest of the racers were already beating their wings and heading off over the trees. But Toss the Bones was hovering. She snorted loudly, kicked her heels behind her, and winged into the air with powerful strokes. The wing edges snapped loudly, and Kelkey clutched on to the reins as well as hugging on to her neck for dear life. They soared over the last straggling galloping Steeds, making it all but impossible for one or two of them to even get into the air.
"Toss the Bones has upset Mile Rider and Wick's Gentle Burn! They aren't even going to start flying! What an upset this is already!"
With the crowd turning from half cheering to a disappointed groan for the two racers, they looked into the air for the flock as the race began in earnest. Over the deep green treetops, the baker's dozen plus one gained altitude and speed. The first leg of the race was up and over the hill itself, then leveled out over the wide valley and a lake, turned with the cliffs at the waterfall and ran along them for another two miles, then finally headed back to the finish line which was already filling up with new faces from the Observation Deck party.
"She can't possibly win," some Holder called. "She's not even properly ridden! Can he even qualify?"
The announcers kept up on the moment by moment changes in the lead. Another Steed pulled from the race when his wing tip clipped a tall tree and he almost spiraled down into the lake below. Proud Walking Darkness was still in the lead, but his rider was glancing back more frequently than she usually did in a race like this. There should be no question - it should be Pillow of Dreams and Handsome Blue Dano following Darkness. Not two complete unknowns - and worse one of them was that white-gold Bones! Beast Mistress Elkain growled and urged her Darkness into a steeper climb than necessary over the ridge near the waterfall, banking sharply and...
"Elkain's almost lost her grip on Proud Walking Darkness' saddle! That girl is crazy!"
"She's doing a good job of intimidating newcomer Wood Side Rough, that's for sure," said the second announcer, "but she's being bold enough to keep the lead. Over those cliffs, though - that's a ride for the history books!"
"Toss the Bones is following Darkness' lead, going unnecessarily high over those cliffs. Now, I want to say that the waterfall here at Astan Lake is more than sixty spans high - and they're at least doubling that height over the ground itself on those Steeds!"
The crowd seemed to hold its breath - including Zafram. The determination in the pearly golden 'old nag' was going to give way to a faltering gate in the air, most of the experienced riders in the audience, including the announcers, said so. They were convinced of it. They just hadn't clued Bones in on that fact. She drove herself with spittle splashing along her neck and flanks, getting into Kelkey's face as well. He could barely see - but he didn't need to. The Steed had this in her blood, and she was bound and determined to finish this race.
Over the cliffside, the pair of leaders flew. Both angry Steeds, black and white, snorted and nickered at each other with their long ears pinned back and eyes fierce. Elkain heard Bones' labored breathing, and knew from experience that this race might kill the old Steed. But the race was almost over - it would be close, and it would actually be a race worth having run!
Kelkey realized that the end of the race was near, when Bones flew in ever-weakening flaps over the treetops. The strip of bright green grass awaited them, the finish line was a brilliant stripe of orange across it pressed onto the ground. Tall poles with photographic equipment would clip shots of the winner.
It wouldn't be a nose to nose finish - in fact it was a wonder that Bones even made it that far. While she was tiring, another Steed had come from behind to reach shoulder to shoulder, and no matter how she tried, Bones just couldn't get going faster again. When they reached the finish line in third however, there wasn't a dry eye or open mouth on the mountain.
Literally hundreds of thousands of credits had been thrown away to this ... old nag. With unsteady gate, she walked toward the winners circles, and Kelkey gratefully got off her back and unloaded the half-broken tack. The bridle came off when the Steed shook her head, and Kelkey nearly fainted. Though his skin was graphite-grey, he'd paled and perhaps aged a decade or more over those cliffs. Everyone knew it. No one knew the right thing to say.
"Congratulations," Zafram said quietly, "I knew you could do it."

"Congratulations," the Breeder announced happily, "I knew you could do this."
The results were in for Zafram's testing, and sure enough the proud father nearby had a mixture of wonder and fear on his face. How would he possibly afford a ... ah, but that was silly. He was a Free Holder now, the winnings from Bones' one race had been more than enough to pay back all his debts and put a plot down in not only his home Zone in Lendau Port, but also have a little bit of land right here in Astan where he boarded Toss the Bones.
The new Free Holder gazed at the woman who'd practically held him down in celebration, and had continued to do so over the next few months. Her pregnancy wouldn't be showing until late in the year, but the Breeder predicted a late summer birth.
When Zafram and Kelkey left the clinic, both were still beaming with happiness. It would be time enough for Kelkey to set up proper housekeeping perhaps in his Lendau Hold and certainly enough for Zafram to bring a bit of happiness to her parents and aging grandpapa. Grandfather Dyfed had passed on just a few years after Zafram's birth, so he would not see his great-grandchild.
Of course, grandpapa wouldn't really be all that pleased to have yet another girl in the family, now would he? Zafram grinned to herself and parted with Kelkey at the transport station.
"You have a safe trip home," she told him, and looked at the big hover jet. "You know I can't stand those things."
"I can understand. Take good care of Bones."
"I will. See me soon."
The hoverjet took off within the quarter hour and Zafram was left with the task of bringing the old Steed out for her daily graze. It was a shame that the Steed hadn't ever been bred, her coloration was truly beautiful once she was sleek with good feed and care. The pearly fur mixed with white feathers, tipped in a brilliant and almost shining metallic gold. Her mane and tail were similarly dotted with gold flecks, but it was clear that the Steed had reached her old age already. She showed no interest whatsoever in the stallions as they came near her, less so than even a young female in estrus would - as they were well known for snubbing their mates until the very last moment.
She wasn't going to be ridden again, and certainly not raced again. But she had become something of a local attraction. Here was the old nag who took third at the big Astan Circuit, blowing everyone out of the water. The highest current winnings on a long shot - after all, the Steed had been flying at 300 to 1 odds! The winnings that Zafram had taken away from her very first, and very last, bet were set aside immediately. She hadn't been sure what to do with them at first. She had thought about giving it to Kelkey, after all he did deserve it. But his winnings proved to be more than enough for him. He might not even know how to manage that kind of money.
So now she had a goal. Her winnings, already earning interest in her account, would be set aside for this child of theirs. She would never need to worry about heading into Bayaran like her father had once or twice before. He was a sensible man, a hard worker, who had just enough gumption to hold on to the Steed when everyone thought he ought to just sell her. A man who had had a couple bad spells of less work and had maintained his dignity while bonded. Zafram didn't love him, but she liked him immensely because of these things.
Zafram's friends thought that she was insane, when she started telling them the good news. Having a child with a Worker? Her? Muddling her fine Breeding with ... him? Well, he was vaguely fertile and she was happy - and perhaps their offspring would be lucky. Even though they didn't want to admit it publicly, several of her close friends wondered just what their union was going to produce for the world at large.
More than ten months later, when Zafram's summer pregnancy came to term, Kelkey was present and worried. Her slender frame was so delicate, and the Breeder had said something about the position of the child's head being all wrong. The heat of the Astan woodland was overbearing for Kelkey - he was used to the Lendau winds from offshore, cool breezes with fog dappling every nook and vale.
In another room of the clinic, the sounds of a struggling birth brought a stone knot into Kelkey's gut. A squealing cry erupted from a child, his, and did not let up until many minutes later. But there was no one coming out from the room - the Breeder and his staff had not taken the child to her father, and had not beckoned him in.
Within half an hour, Kelkey was given the worst and the best news of his life. His daughter was fine. His mate, Zafram the High Holder who gave brilliant parties and was the only one in the world who believed in his Steed and he, had died of exhaustion and blood loss.
Kelkey's dark grey skin went ashen, as he held his pale brown skinned daughter in his arms. He stared at her, sought out the features that might remind him of the woman ... Lost, Kelkey knew that the Breeder's fees had already been paid. He knew that there would be legal riots and books of paperwork to be done.
Let someone else do it, was what he decided.
When his daughter, Zekrel, was of Inheriting age, he knew she'd be wealthy enough to remain a Holder, or perhaps even a High Holder like her mother. Perhaps, she might even Inherit parts of the estate where Bones was boarded. He didn't know, and at the moment that the vision of his daughter was lost to a swim of tears, he didn't much care.

"Did you see that?" Someone asked. Their companion nodded mutely. "How'd she do that?"
Zekrel glanced up with a glare of her dark brown eyes and went back to work. A crowd always seemed to gather when she was sculpting. She'd chosen a parklike grassland near a Steed ranch to work, which might have been a poor choice but she did want to work on a Steed. She'd never been able to get the wing wrist done right, and really wanted to get closer. Her father had always told her stories about Steeds being rather hard to manage, but she was of course speaking in artistic terms and he in more physical ones.
Zekrel's method of sculpting was in fact the reason why people gathered. She would work first in clay, soft and red, getting her hands all mucky and usually her silver-green hair would get plastered to her forehead. The colors of dry clay mixed with the dusting of pale grey spots over her softly brown-ash skin. Zekrel could concentrate on part of her work while people were watching, but the other part... It always caused a stir.
Because when she was finished with the basic sculpt, she would concentrate and turn the clay into a silvery white metal material - palladium to anyone of a more advanced education. It was relatively soft, and rather pretty. She could turn dirt into ore, ore into rock, stone into metal. She never tried changing something into a gas or anything deadly - mercury had been one accident that killed a pet she had, so she remained as far from dangerous toxic elements as she could. But palladium seemed to be relatively safe.
She could paint it, too, which she often did. It took paint nicely. People didn't understand why she wasn't a filthy rich High Holder.
So here sat Zekrel on a park bench across a dirt road facing a dozen colorful Steeds in their privately owned herd formation. The big stallion was prancing around a couple of the mares who laid their ears back and pawed the ground at him. He would flair his wings up, holding his flight feathers as stiffly out as he could, kicking his legs back and rearing up. The girls weren't impressed. The people watching were, but surely the bunch of mares on heat didn't care for his antics one bit. When one of the three dark colored mares finally accepted the slate and blue marked stallion, it was open season for teaching younger visitors about reproduction.
Zekrel finally sighed and had a chance to work a bit more on her sculpture without people staring at her while she did so. It took several minutes for the changes in the clay to become permanent, so she concentrated while she could. When she'd exhausted her psionic power, she leaned back and drew a cloth over her clay-messed face.
"You know, the way your steed poses there really ought to be a companion piece. He's stunning, but he needs a mate." Said a man's voice, directly beside Zekrel. She nearly leapt from the bench, but chose instead to stare at the man with a startled look.
"Sorry - I didn't mean to surprise you. I wasn't aware you hadn't seen me sit down."
"I wasn't much aware that I'd invited you to do so," Zekrel said, a little more sharply than she meant to. She was tired, working like this always wore her out, but she could usually get at least one large clay work done a day - not that she finished a clay sculpt every day! But being tired always brought out a little of the worst in her.
The man might have been hurt by her tone, or her rather pointed chiding. Instead, he kept his calm exterior on, and tilted his head in apology - with a sly and very practiced smile. "I did not mean to intrude. But you must admit, now that there's a stallion, there ought to be a mare."
Zekrel stared at him. He was quite handsome, but in an... untrustable sort of way. He was an Owner by the looks of his clothing, and possibly a rather rich one. His vibrant blue skin seemed lighter around his eyes and lips, drawing attention to them - and Zekrel wasn't sure that he was simply marked that way or was wearing makeup. He had short, swept back pale blue hair, and striking leaf-green eyes, and his smile seemed to widen as she stared at him.
Finally Zekrel blinked and turned back to her statue. She had nothing to say to the man about his behavior - he was rude and it was obvious that he knew it. But perhaps... "You might have a point," she said simply. "But today is not a good day to start another sculpture for me. I'll be resting up."
"Do you sell your work?"
"To strangers? No." Zekrel said. She didn't look him in the eye, but she watched how he stirred beside her, as she gazed at the Steeds who had finished their act and were now grazing peacefully.
"Bhex," he said. It took a moment for Zekrel to realize that he was holding out his dark blue hand in a greeting to her. She continued to stare at his hand, the markings of lighter blue upon cobalt were present along each knuckle and his nails were light blue, it was almost like he'd scraped his knuckles in paint, but the match in color was too close to be makeup or accidental. She thought about her own skin and how it was marked with freckles of grey upon dusty brown. Hmn. Thinking like a Breeder would get her nowhere.
"My name is Zekrel," she finally said, taking his hand and watching his very slight surprise when he realized that she was still quite covered in clay. "And might I ask if you're local? Are they your Steeds I've been watching?"
"Oh no, no," Bhex said while casually trying to figure out a way to clean his hand. Zekrel picked up one of her rags from the bucket of 'clean' water nearby, and waited for him to use it. It was halfway as if he had never seen a washtowel, or perhaps if he were an Owner after all, he probably had people to do that sort of thing for him.
They did, have people who did that, didn't they?
"Then where are you from?" Zekrel noticed that he hadn't prefaced his name with a Status, so she couldn't tell and didn't want to make a mistake by calling him Lord Bhex. She'd done so enough times while meeting her mother's old friends at the Inheritance reading. She'd had a hard enough time getting used to being called Mistress, since her Inheritance gave her enough land to Hold and money to burn that she invested in a Membayar education above and beyond her father's Free Holdings. It was enough for her, it seemed like not nearly enough for her mother's strange High Holder friends. Too bad.
Bhex said, "Mada, born and raised. But I like to travel."
"You're quite far from home then," Zekrel said, "what is it you do, then?"
Still he remained elusive, "I try to acquire things, for people. Land, items, other people. I deal."
"I see," Zekrel said, but it was patently obvious to both of them that she was lying. She began to get nervous, and to hide it decided that cleaning her arms and face up, and packing in for the day, would be in order.
She noticed that Bhex didn't quite offer to help her, until it came time to pack the newly metallic steed statue.
"My buyers are quite picky about what they look for. I would have to say," Bhex said while settling the statue into a wicker box she'd brought, "that this would be an ideal piece to show them. Has your work ever been in an exhibition, Zekrel?"
At that, the young Mistress straightened. "You ... you could do that? I mean, put my work somewhere?"
"I could put your work anywhere." The way he said it, the roll of his eyes, and the slight grin on his lips would have told anyone that he wasn't just talking about the steed statue.
Anyone but Zekrel. She was after all an aspiring artist. To have her work shown anywhere that higher Status folk would see it, was an honor. She knew that her work was mostly "popular", she made Steeds and spires and small creatures to give away to children. She would have to produce something far better for a more 'advanced' audience.
Bhex helped Zekrel tuck her supplies away in her carriage - she would be driving it herself he noticed. It was a modest little Ground Steed that drove it, and Bhex had little liking for the wingless creatures. Of course, he didn't know that Zekrel had had this one bred for her and was rather fond of it.
The smiling blue man offered Zekrel a small printed metal card, embossed with his name, and at last the young woman knew for sure that he was a Lord. The card had several contact numbers on it, one in each large office he apparently Held, on each Land.
"My, you do get around, don't you?" Zekrel commented, as she hooked the reins off of their clip and settled them into her hands.
"I do. Keep that in mind, my dear, and please contact me when you are ready for some... exposure."
She was a bright girl. She wasn't very experienced, though, and the insincere smile that Bhex gave her didn't make her want to throw his business card away.
All Zekrel could think of was what she'd be making to show off to he and his buyers. Buyers! Imagine that? Up until now she'd only done one or two things for money - she just loved making her artwork. Bookends and a pretty commemorative urn were all she'd really been paid for.
She had so many ideas, but no energy to create. When she got to her home, a modest house some ways away from the actual Observation Hold which she'd indeed Inherited, she paced about but in the end wound up flipping through half a dozen art collection books to see if there was something that hadn't been done a million times before.
Over the next few days, as her inspiration mounted and her power came back in force, Zekrel decided that a slightly larger piece would be best, and a couple small but perfect items to frame it. Zekrel had tried doing human subjects, but they never turned out the way she wanted. People told her they were 'fine' which meant they were 'adequate' and to an artist, that just wasn't enough.
So she shied away from any piece that involved a specific person, and went for a more abstract approach. Zekrel loved watching professional dancers, and had collected vids of a number of important competitions over the last few hundred years. She studied them intensely and finally came up with a main piece. An essential dance, with three people, was the Tree-flier dance. The individuals she watched had not won their competition, but they had always been Zekrel's favorite dance trio. A married couple and their most favored Slave, all three long dead since the competitions she'd watched were very old.
Zekrel set to work with her clay. She dug it herself, from a pit area near her Hold - in fact she wanted to buy the land, or annex it at least, because no one else was using it save some other artists. Mixed with a bit of fresh water, the lumps of red-tan clay became easily molded and pliable. She would be using a lot of it, and was fairly glad that when she was finished with the piece, the metal version would actually weigh considerably less than this clay did!
Two base mounds, the idea of motion and flow. A third, set above and beside them, showing off the flier's approach. Her favorite part of that dance was when the mated pair would toss the 'loser' of the dance into the air and celebrate them - it would be their turn later. This moment, captured in a rough form, was how she left the piece that night.
The next day, after wetting down the clay and circling it endlessly to decide what details to work on first, Zekrel concentrated on essential forms like arms and knees, twists of torso, angles of heads. Since she did not have to fire the clay or finish it in one sitting, Zekrel did not need to worry about the piece breaking or having different levels of dryness to the whole piece.
It took a week, but when she was finished carving pieces off and adding others, the Tree Flier Dance piece was nearly complete. She wanted to add two side items - now what would they be?
She decided upon a little pair of grouped instruments, the ones used most often when playing music for this dance. A pair of drums, one on each piece, a horn on one and a flute on the other, and two violins. She was good at solid lines like they offered, and finished those quickly - they were not quite the length of her hand, while the main dancers were taller than her arm was long.
When she knew the piece was done, as done as it could be in clay, she rested and meditated quietly in the garden near her work shop. Then, in the afternoon, she began to transmute the clay into metal.
Because she had a decent amount of experience at this work, she knew to start on the outside, and work in. The clay was more than dry enough to have no concerns over it collapsing. And that way, she could scoop out the remnants of the clay and keep the piece even lighter. She certainly didn't have enough energy reserved to transmute the whole thing solid!
The evening came, and she was asleep. Found by one of her Bayaran in the morning the very next thing she did was to finish the piece. The smaller items came easily, the day after that.
And finally, Zekrel was ready to call Bhex.

"Do you see how the lines are so flowing? I love it. I'll take it."
"I saw it first, Lady Wol, what do you say to asking the artist to auction it?"
"I think it's a dear idea. I will have it." Wol said, and the pair of Ladies made for the popular girl who was surrounded by High Holders and Owners alike. Her pretty silvery-green hair had been done up professionally (how else to do one's hair?) at Bhex's request, and she wore a long gown in which she clearly felt uncomfortable. She held a glass of wine which she hadn't taken a sip from yet, and in her other hand was a small piece of cheese she had no taste for.
Bewildered, and shocked that her work was causing such dismaying response among Bhex's friends, Zekrel held her hands up and begged the people around her to please leave her a moment to think.
It was Bhex's clear voice that cut through their chatter, "the artist needs some space, Ladies, Lords, High Masters. Please allow her a bit of breathing room!" They moved a little, and he went back to her side protectively.
Shielding her from the others, Lord Bhex grinned widely with a drink dangling from his fingers. "They absolutely love you, they adore you."
"I'm... I'm not all that good," Zekrel breathed. Bhex encouraged her to drink her wine, telling her it would relax her a bit. She took a long sip, and blinked. The wine was sweet, potent, and caused a bit of a swoon. But she didn't drop the glass or slide to the floor - Bhex gently supported her.
"Take some deep breaths," he suggested. "Now, we've got to get back to them, they're going to start requesting soon enough and if you do as they asked, and have an auction first, you'll know what kind of price to demand for any custom work. Do you see how it works?"
Mutely, she nodded. She was still rather overwhelmed by all this, but she realized that her work did have a charm that perhaps these cultured folk hadn't seen in a long while. She dearly hoped that she never lost that charm. It meant the world to her.
What meant more to these people, was the shine on the piece, or the elegant drape of a dress, visual things that Zekrel didn't much understand. Certainly, making a piece 'look' right was more important to her than if it were anatomically 'accurate'. Her eye was artistic, and theirs seemed to appreciate that much at least.
So it was that three days later, in an auction house that Bhex often used, a number of pieces that Zekrel could part with (and had been shown at Bhex's insistence, when he saw her collection of dozens of pieces no one had seen) were put up for money. Lots of money.
Because he was quite good at his job, Bhex took only the most minor amount as an agent, for this auction. He wanted Zekrel to be happy and overwhelmed and rolling in money for the time being.
It would all come back to him in the long run. That was what he was always sure of.
When Bhex insisted that Zekrel take her pieces on tour, she almost balked. Would it not be easier to take people to the art, rather than the other way around? But he calmly assured her that this was how it was done nowadays, and people were far more likely to travel to a show later, if they had the chance to see it near their homestead now. Mada was their first destination, his homestead was the place he decided to host her works. Most of his local buyers were there, quite familiar with him and his deals.
A lovely coastal town in Kiran, called Telva, was next. Seven pieces had been pre-ordered while they were still in Mada, and Zekrel didn't have the faintest idea how to work while on tour. She had clay with her, not very much of course, but when she said something about wanting to head back home to work a bit, Bhex almost lost his normally sedate temper at her.
"You can't interrupt the first tour you're on. We've got all the information you need for the art commissions, so just smile and accept their deals and I'll take care of all the paperwork."
With some hesitation, mostly because she'd never encountered someone with such a forceful, yet swaying personality, Zekrel agreed to stay on tour. They hit two more cities before she got the chance to head home. More than a month on tour - and only three days of that she had devoted to her artwork at all.
Her Bayaran had kept up her homestead while she was gone, and with some regret, was paid off in full by that time. Zekrel didn't have time to take on another - even though she could easily afford to, she just was kept so busy that she didn't even notice when Bhex brought in one of his own to take care of the grounds and household duties. A Slave, not Bond, was permanently planted near Zekrel if she needed anything.
She shortly got to work - and directly after that, got used to the idea of a permanent attendant to get her food or remind her to go to bed. Single-mindedly, and with an intensity that only an artist has, Zekrel worked on each piece, one after the other, that had been requested and paid-in-half during the tour.
Seventeen weeks later, every one of them was paid in full, received, adored and placed in whatever area of honor the buyer had wanted it. Exhausted, Zekrel decided that if she held another piece of clay she'd probably fuse it into a spike and kill herself with it.
"Now now, there's no need to talk like that," Bhex sweetly purred at her over a dinner brought by another two Slaves of his. "When you're ready to return to your studio it will be there. Everyone understands how important rest is for a great artist."
"You speak such flattery," she muttered over a mouthful of well-earned food. She surely had been strengthening her powers, especially when she was asked to create a piece with multiple different mineral elements in it. "I just hope that some of those pieces don't wind up being melted down for money. I mean, that is real gold and plat I'm shaping, after all."
Because she was tired, or perhaps because Bhex didn't want her to respond, Zekrel missed the rather annoyingly greedy look on his face. He knew of at least one buyer who'd paid a pittance for one gloriously golden lump which was in fact promptly melted down and used as collateral in an investment the next week. Such was the life of a businessman like Bhex.
And he was tired. But not so tired that he didn't want a nice night of drink and romance. Zekrel didn't much think of him in any real way romantically - but that was never a problem for one such as Bhex. It wasn't that he planned on wooing her into bed.
He could just do what he was doing right after dinner. Effectively cold-cocking her brain into believing she was having a long relaxing bath, while he had his way somewhat less than gently with her body. In the morning, she wouldn't remember anything but what he had inserted into her mind.
He knew that he was riding a rather narrow line. She was fertile, her family line proved that. He'd researched this woman. Her unusual background stopped at the Raising of a certain Slave into Animal Mastery, but he well knew there was more to it than just a random Slave. She was valuable in terms of breeding matter.
But would he have the power to blot out an entire pregnancy?
Bhex arrived at Zekrel's hold the next weekend to find her back at her studio, this time working on something for her own self. A tinge of anger went through the Lord, how could she squander such power on herself when there were paying customers waiting? Well, all right, to be fair there weren't any right at the moment because he hadn't submitted her work to the galleries he'd been meaning to get them in.
She was a hard worker - almost as hard as some of his Slaves. That was her father's genes surely. That old man wouldn't pose any difficulty in keeping away from his precious daughter. She was already far more important than he was, socially. He didn't have the guts to confront an Owner. A small part of Lord Bhex wanted him to. Just so he could be excised from the situation permanently.
Bhex pretended to be interested in this odd little piece she was making. It was hardly the size of her fist, but intricate. She'd done a lot more work shaping the metals after she'd transmuted the clay, so her abilities had in fact gotten much stronger in the weeks before. She didn't bother to beat herself up for a detail here or there, when she knew she could correct it in the finishing.
Good for her.
Bhex supervised the next gallery run, and this time Zekrel didn't really need prodding to take wine and biscuits and cheese and bits of polite society finger-foods, mingle and talk with the patrons. She seemed to actually be enjoying herself, by the time this two week stint was over. Another eight commissions, and another half dozen works sold in the gallery. She was making quite the name.
He was making the name for her. To her, it was delightfully convenient to have Bhex there to handle things for her. She could concentrate properly and work on her art, and he would most certainly find people who wanted it all. He'd done so for even some of her oldest pieces. Ones which she had never really been interested in selling, until then.
Two years went by. And then, rather abruptly, the artist-about-town had to go into seclusion because of her health. So much work, so many parties, they had taken their toll!
Or so Bhex announced. She would indeed be taking a well needed rest, working now and then. But the year she took off was one determined work-out for Bhex as well, because at the end of it the infant he sequestered away to one of his specially Bred Slaves was one she'd never even meet.

"She's quite depressed, I'm sorry. You'll have to come back later," said the Slave to one of the curious visitors that Zekrel would normally have loved to see. She was depressed. The loss of a child - even one she never even realized she was bearing - had a deep impact. Her work did not suffer in a way that anyone could tell.
She poured herself into it, and Bhex gently reasserted himself into her life after more than a year absence. To all appearances, she'd taken a break and now was back in the swing of things, as a moody artiste would be. Her work load wasn't nearly as strenuous when she got back to it, Bhex wanted to extend this cash cow as long as he could.
Four more years of touring followed by studio work on commissions kept them both busy. Bhex also 'managed' several others, but none were really in her league and none of them ever even saw Zekrel. When it seemed Zekrel was in good enough spirits, Bhex gently nudged her decision to write a new will. After all she wasn't married and didn't much think she'd find anyone worth having babies with (Bhex cringed, but he knew it was all for the best that she be kept both in the dark and silent), and she would be able to re-title to Owner if she wished.
It was three more years that Zekrel started to take the wear and tear more seriously. Though she was only fifty, she felt so drained all the time. A bit of a break was what she desired. Abruptly, while Bhex was out on one of his other tours, and when his Slave Taldan was off doing something unimportant like finding groceries, Zekrel located her old carriage, hooked it up to one of Bhex's Steeds, and went off to a country retreat.
"Oh, Lady Zekrel! We weren't expecting you this summer," said the Membayar behind the counter at the main office. "And congratulations, I must say!"
Zekrel almost waved off the plump woman's smile and almost bashful expression as one that a fan of her artwork would give. Until she saw herself in a mirror near the courtyard doors beyond.
She was pregnant? Rather much so, in fact. Zekrel fell to her knees, and the Mistress tending the retreat gasped. She got help in the form of two of her own Bayaran and escorted the Lady into a private suite.
"Should I contact your -" the Mistress started to say but Zekrel started and her eyes went wide.
"No! No, I'm here alone, and I want no one to know. I cannot stress that enough... No one. I ... have to think things out..."
There was a strange desperation in her voice that the Mistress wasn't sure how to interpret. But she honored the Lady's wishes. It was odd, because Zekrel didn't really respond when anyone called her Lady. Perhaps she'd retitled so recently that she still wasn't in the habit?
Zekrel sat in the private rooms, curled up with her fingers knotted around her knees. She stared at her belly - huge. She was sure that she'd have to have been this way for about... what, six, seven months at least? She wasn't all that familiar with Breeding to know. She had the oddest feeling of memories, fleeting things of pain and distance.
"That ... foul bastard," Zekrel whispered. She could remember barely enough over the last several years to know that now since she'd been away from Bhex's influence, she was of more sound mind. He'd taken her body? How? And when? It wasn't so much that Zekrel didn't remember doing work, or touring about the world with the gallery set. But ... everything else, like taking meals or gathering clay which she loved to do otherwise, they were all a blur. She did seem to remember taking an awful lot of baths. Far more than she would typically - she liked the feel of the dried clay on her arms and forehead. And like her Worker-born father she didn't mind a little grime here and there. Her nails were utterly manicured - how could they be that way and still work with clay?
Absently, Zekrel turned to a table and looked over a candle-holder. It was almost pure silver, heavy. She didn't need to even wave her hands near it to shape it into something new: a solid golden snake coiled and ready to strike.
She stared at her hands. "I've gotten that good and didn't even realize it?" She whispered to herself.
The next few days she spent in confused silence and was kept private from the rest of the guests. But soon enough, Bhex's Slave located the carriage that he knew he'd seen in the Hold's storage area. He boldly demanded to see the Lady, and presented an odd but legal document that allowed him to act as his Lord's direct agent. They could never stop Lord Bhex if he'd been there, anyway.
The Mistress softly opened the door to the suite where Zekrel lay, and cleared her throat. "I'm so sorry, Lady Zekrel," she said, and Taldan burst into the room. He was a tall, four armed man, who clearly had heavily Bred features. He might have even been spliced together, by an expert geneticist. He was far more than a convenience, Zekrel realized now. He was a guard. Not to keep people away from her, but to keep Zekrel where she was wanted.
"Stay away from me, you filthy Slave. I don't Own you but you'd better believe I'll punish you like I did if you come near me."
"Now now, such words," Taldan said, waving two of his hands and leaving the other two able to swiftly take care of anything else. "Come along back home. You've work to do and there is no reason to sit in here alone moping."
"... Moping? I'm pregnant!"
"Yes, and most women in your condition tend to have better sense in their heads than to skip away in a carriage and leave themselves vulnerable." The Slave was good - he'd been around Bhex all his life.
"I don't even remember enjoying getting this way, Taldan, so unless you've some magical explanation for me, Bhex is going to have a lot of talking to do."
"I'm sure he will," Taldan said, with a bit of menace. The Mistress of the resort bit her lip, and could clearly be seen to ponder if she should smash the Slave with a vase nearby, but that thought was cut short when he gripped her chubby throat with one random hand. "She was never here. I was not here. Any questions?"
The Mistress, terrified beyond belief, shook her head and blinked an apology to Zekrel. Taldan then turned to the artist in question, who had pressed herself into the corner of the huge bed she'd been on for the whole day.
"Now are you going to be able to walk, or should I carry you? If I must carry you, I might be forced to keep you silent. It is your choice."
"It's never been my choice before," Zekrel growled, "why start now? Come and take me if you must. I won't leave peacefully."
If Bhex had been there he would have done one of several things, after this moment. He'd have silenced Zekrel and made her walk along side, which didn't happen. He'd have tried to calmly speak to her and get her to come along quietly which also didn't happen. The third option, one which Taldan truly wished to exercise, would be the 'keeping everyone from remembering the loud screaming that was coming from the Lady as she was forcibly removed from her retreat and kidnapped back to her Hold.'
She was in a foul mood when Bhex arrived. He had been on another Land, and in the middle of a very important meeting, when the call went in that he was absolutely needed - right now - back at the Studio. Both of them were so angry that it was a blessing to Taldan that he was not going to be kept in the room for this confrontation. He'd never seen Bhex so angry - and no one had ever seen Zekrel like this.
Yet she was powerless when Bhex asserted his mental control over her yet again. Years of this treatment had left her mind ragged and unable to defend itself. Though she was a psionic with powers of matter manipulation, she was certainly no telepath. And Bhex was one of the very best in the world.
Zekrel slumped, and her dark eyes went vacant.
"She'll be out for a while. Tell me how this happened," Bhex asked Taldan outside. The Slave explained the situation, and profusely apologized for the error. It was his fault she'd gotten out - and he was more than willing to accept any punishment.
"No, I think... I think this shall be over soon enough, Taldan. One way or another." Bhex had lost all sense of subterfuge on this matter. "Keep your eyes on her from now until I tell you not to. Every waking moment, and sleeping as well. When I am with her, you may rest. Not until then."
"Yes Lord Bhex," Taldan bowed deeply - he was rather glad he hadn't been punished. But where else was Bhex going to find such a perfect lackey at short notice?
The last two months of Lady Zekrel's pregnancy went on in a sullen, angry and rather fruitless silence. She didn't work - she outright refused to do so when she wasn't being forced. When she was being forced to shape things, Bhex had to all but move her hands for her. He didn't know how to use her power, but he could turn it on and off at will. Few people could match his ability - save one particular person.
His six and a half year old son, with Zekrel, who was tucked away still but had been well cared for by Bhex himself now and again. The boy knew right off that his situation was special. Now, he expected a sibling soon. When Zekrel went into labor, Bhex blanketed the area with a forgetful mental mist.
Zekrel was not in much pain. Not as much as her first birth. Bhex assisted her as he could but largely, he didn't even bother to call a Breeder or Healer. He had Taldan summon a transport which would take the new child away quickly and safely.
"You did this to me," shrieked Zekrel. Her dappled grey-brown skin had darkened with the effort of pushing, and she was almost helpless to stop Bhex from almost yanking the child free when it came. She screamed, almost endlessly.
When the child, a girl, was cleaned and bundled - and quieted down - Bhex returned to the side of the woman he'd been working on for the last decade. His dark face showed a calm, perfect anger. Zekrel was limp from her effort, and sobbing kept her from screaming.
Her breath caught in her throat - mostly due to Bhex's strong, manicured hand around it. He squeezed, and her hands lamely tried to pry him away. She clawed at his face, but he batted her hands away with his left. "Now don't bother gasping or trying to get help. You're done for. You're quite finished. But your service to me has gone on long enough that I think I'll explain this to you. In words you might be able to understand, simple beast."
Zekrel's consciousness was fading, already half-exhausted by the birth. She couldn't respond, but she stared at his bright green eyes with a fierce hatred and confusion.
"You never understood the collectors, Zekrel. Never. Your simple ways were charming to them, and your artwork was ... interesting to some of them. And yes, some have been melted down and used for other more purposeful needs. I'm so sorry." The lie in his voice was only there because he didn't care to stop it. "But now you're going to do me one last favor. You've provided me with two wonderful and powerful children - yes, two, dear, there was a boy six years ago - and your artwork has gotten me quite rich of late."
He throttled the last bit of life out of her with both hands, a strangely satisfying groan coming from her crushed throat as he did so.
"And now, with you dead, the collector's value on your work will skyrocket. Thank you, Zekrel."
Bhex stood, brushed his hands off and made sure that there was no blood of his anywhere, and none from the birth on his suit. Dirt disgusted him - and blood wasn't the easiest thing to clean from silk!
"Put her in the tub, do something inventive," Bhex said to Taldan, "I'll expect you in Mada within the week, and I'll have my son start training with you when you get back."

"Is that all I have to do?" Zherxee sighed, and Taldan gave the flippant boy a bit of a glare.
"Your powers are growing daily, but if you let your training lapse they will fade. It is very important to use them as much as possible."
With a grimace, Zherxee turned his attention on a bottle filled with clear bubbly liquid. He touched it, and his ten-year-old hands felt things that no other nearby, save Taldan, could sense.
"It was manufactured in the glassworks downtown. The mineral water comes from it's same spring." He said. He furrowed his eyebrows, and added, "and someone's drunk from it recently."
"Yes?"
With some effort, the young boy located the tiniest fractions of cell matter left over from the drinker's lips. Since they had long since died after being away from their body, he could treat them as objects, instead of living things. Zherxee tilted his head, and said, "Slave Alben drank this, didn't he?"
With a proud smile, Slave Taldan nodded. "Yes, that's right. Good work."
"May I go to the pond now?" Zherxee sighed again, his long drawn out desire was clear.
"Go. Your sister may be joining you, with her nursemaid."
The young man was growing quickly, and his mud-violet skin was becoming marked with pale grey dots over his eyes and fingers, rather like his father's. His bright metallic sea-blue hair contrasted solidly with his dark skin, made him quite easy to spot. His tiny sister, a bundle of energy already at three years old, had two colors distinctly on her own skin, a dark blue color mostly, and on her palms, underarms and other softer skin she had a dark brown. Her eyes had never stopped changing color, he'd noticed.
Taldan wondered what their father had in mind for these two. He knew that the plan to give himself at least one heir had worked perfectly, but why two? He never questioned vocally, but he was certain that Bhex knew of his doubts.
Slave Utek came by with her young charge Bhez, who squealed happily at the sight of her brother, and nearly bowled him over into the small round decorative pond. "I'm not sure what to do with her half the time. She refuses to read, but she continually tries to pry into my memories."
"Imagine that," Taldan said without surprise, "her father's daughter."
Utek scoffed, but knew he was right. Bhez would be at least as powerful as her father was, but probably had a vague sense of conscience to her. Both Slaves hoped for the best.
They had to rush to the pond when it looked like Zherxee was going to dunk his sister into the shallow water.

Casually throwing on a mask of a smile, Bhez greeted her father's guests. She turned to her brother after they entered the estate, crossed her currently-golden eyes and stuck out her tongue.
==Oh stop. They're better than the Beast Lords he was entertaining last week, aren't they?== Zherxee mentally commented.
++Feh,++ Bhez thought back.
The party was a small one, designed mostly to locate new blood for Bhex's business ventures. He would ask questions and pry a bit mentally. If he encountered any resistance, Bhez would take care of that. Her tiniest nudge could cause a riot in a meditation garden or soothe the angriest Bond.
Zherxee's job would be to keep track of their movements in the house. Some things had gone missing here and there, and they intended to find out who among Bhex's 'friends' were taking them. Zherxee reached out his mind to a nearby table, where one minor Lord was leaning. He got a feel for the man's aura based on that touch, and would remember it if he found it where it didn't belong.
"She's such a young thing, and already fully passed her exams?" Someone asked of Bhez, and it was time for her to go flirt with the Owners. Zherxee gave a private grin, and she thought the better of sticking her tongue out again. She was twelve, blossoming into a beautiful Lady. Her elder brother was handsome in the same way that their father was, with a sharp cut to his jaw and now that he was older he kept his hair trimmed almost into a flat-top. Every Lady present wanted to know if he was available.
Which he was, of course, but just not to them. He had little taste for the women that his father wanted him to associate with. He had more dangerous prey in mind. A High Holder party was next on the agenda, since their father had retitled up recently, and the engaging women found in those circles were far more to his liking.
He wasn't entirely certain, because she wasn't properly sexual yet, but he thought that his younger sister found them that way too. Now that could be entertaining.
A small strangely mental 'ping' went off in the young man's head, and he drifted off away from the chattering Owners, into a side room, where he slipped into the rest of the estate. The long hallways had tall doors leading to this library or that display room, all the upstairs was off limits to all but the most personal friends.
And that was where he had to go. A private room, filled with artistic treasures that his deceased mother had created, was where he'd felt the aura he concentrated on before. Calmly, Zherxee climbed the stairs into the upper hall, and listened carefully.
The group of Bayaran that his father bonded were all attending the guests below, and the Slaves mostly had the night off. Father believed in work where it was most appropriate. That meant largely that their normal staff was gambling in their quarters or sleeping, entertaining themselves as best they could, rather than being in the hallways waiting instruction - and unable to watch for thieves.
"It's strange isn't it," said Zherxee to the Lord who stood awkwardly trying to remove a little silver box from a display, "that a man who obviously has taste and talent cannot see fit to buy his goods the old fashioned way. Instead he has to steal them from others."
"I - I, that is, erm," Lord Polla stammered, his orange-tan face growing red with embarrassment. "Now look here, this belonged to my family," he started to lie but with a tiny blink from Zherxee he just put the object back. "I don't expect this to be spoken of," he announced as if he had a say in the matter.
"Spoken of exactly to whom?" Zherxee asked, closing the door behind him. He entered the room quietly, catlike. "And to what end? Three other pieces have gone missing, not coincidentally when a certain Lord Polla had been present in the house the day before. I would like to inquire about those other items, Lord Polla." Though he spat out the name, the rest of Zherxee's words were smooth and almost pleasant. Hypnotic. He felt the Lord's heartbeat gain pace, but let out another smooth purring statement. "I think you ought to, when you get home, take those pieces and put them into a nice shipping carton, and send them back to us here. They did start out here."
"I - I ... but I don't have them..." Polla said, and Zherxee's hypnotic gaze and tone dropped abruptly.
"What?" He said, sharp.
"I had to sell them. Why else would a man of my Status be stealing? I'm almost completely broke. Had to sell my last Slave off, and cancel my bonds already. I can't afford to lose any more!" He began to panic, and Zherxee gave a quick, almost unconscious nudge to his sister downstairs. "You don't know what it's like, your father is far richer than any of my other friends - he can afford to lose these little trinkets!" Polla whined.
Moments later, Bhez found them, she could hardly miss them in fact. Polla's distress was apparent from below, in the ball room. It was a good thing not too many other Owners were as highly Bred as they were - because they would surely have detected something going on, like their father had.
"Zherxee, why is he sweating like that?" Bhez asked sweetly. "Come now, Lord Polla. There's nothing wrong that a little work can't solve. Come and tell me your problems. Come along," she said, pulling his hands and leading him to an alcove where there was a bench, opposite another work of art by the late great Lady Zekrel.
Polla found his distress abating near this little girl, and he let out a sobbing sigh. "I'm sorry. I know it's wrong, and I know it'll probably land me Bonded soon enough. But that's where I was going anyway, it was only a matter of time..."
That said, Zherxee and Bhez exchanged a look from behind the man's slumped shoulders. Bhez sweetly asked, "how would you like to be my first Bayaran?"

With a false sniff and wiping of a nonexistent tear from her eye, Lady Bhez waved at the sad face of a Slave as he was being taken away to his new home.
"He was my first Bayaran, and my first Permanent Bond, too..." She said wistfully. "I just don't know what I'll do without him."
"Probably lose less silverware," muttered her brother, and she smacked him on the shoulder.
"Don't ruin the moment with reality," she spat with a laugh.
They turned and sought out their friend Breeder Haloq, a burly woman who was far better educated than her appearance would indicate. If she didn't wear her Breeder's pin, most people would assume she was merely a Worker. That was part of the charm of having her as a friend and lover. The brother and sister pair both were amazed at the woman's stamina, and she eagerly took them both on.
"Now that that's over with, can you please come with me to my new Hold? Please? You won't believe it. It's a huge lab, and I can't wait to start using it." Haloq said. She bounced up and down and caused a bit of energy between the pair watching her rather large breasts.
"Of course we will," Zherxee smiled. "Your carriage or mine?"
They were pleased to note that her new digs were still in Mada. Neither of the Owners wanted to go romping around the countryside. They both preferred the artificial to the natural, even to the point of their little pond from their childhood, which was all manufactured.
Haloq drove her own carriage, and though she had been an Owner before getting her Breeding degrees, she rarely used her Slaves for such things as driving. She truly enjoyed commanding things, and a Steed was just as good as any other creature. Haloq was a control freak - but her weakness was that she also greatly enjoyed the thrill of not being in control, which was something that both Zherxee and Bhez loved to exercise. One was rather more physical about it, while his sister was able to use her powers to do so. They both fascinated Haloq.
When they reached her new lab, it did impress the pair. It was a large, well-maintained and clearly well-used facility, obviously for a sixth-degree Breeder.
"What are you going to do with all this stuff, Haloq? You aren't allowed to use these devices yet." Bhez said.
"Yet," Haloq grinned. "I don't have to settle for a Fourth Degree you know. It's not that big a step into engineering."
The siblings gazed at one another with some disbelief, "not that big, only three years of intense study and testing, feh!" Bhez announced.
"I can still do it and I want to, anyway. That last High Holder paid off this place for me, you know!" Haloq bragged, glancing around at the gigantic lab. "They were so desperate for a child, I can't believe it."
"Rugrats," Bhez shuddered, "eew."
"You don't have to like them," Haloq said. "But they are why I got into the business. I'm hardly fertile anyway. This will give me the chance to do more with my own rather impressive self."
They laughed, not harshly - because they knew she was right. A powerfully strong, hardy woman, unBred, would be a fine addition to anyone's line. She had no trace of mutation or psionics, but she was determined and willful, bright and fairly well-adjusted. All of those, traits that most people desired in their offspring.
Of course, those things would only be put into a blender, should she decide that Zherxee was the right man for her splicing or studies... Or his sister Bhez.
Her red-orange skin might blend well with his, and she'd already commented that their hair would look marvelous if combined - his metallic sea shade and her brilliant yellow would obviously put a terrific spin into green. While they would talk of these things for long hours, Bhez would listen and take notes, but rarely contribute. Her only interest in Breeding was 'could it manufacture a Slave who liked being manipulated, would do as she said without trouble, and could handle being tossed about a little?' Haloq assured her that it could.
"In fact I promise you, the very first thing I create out of my studies, will be a Slave for you. I'll even start looking right now for the right potential mix."
Privately, Bhez knew she added 'I'll start with myself', and the Lady hadn't even inserted that thought for her!
For the moment, though, the trio had fun breaking in some of the more enjoyable looking table surfaces.

"You don't have to carry the creature if you don't want to, Bhez," Haloq rolled her orange eyes. "I mean, even I can bear the child for you. If you really want me to." Half a moment later, Haloq added with a challenge filled grin, "coward."
That sparked Bhez of course, but it still didn't convince her that the spliced offspring she was commissioning should come from her own body. She claimed it would ruin her figure, even if only briefly, and that who wanted to have a Slave brought forth from your own body - that was meant for Inheritors, after all. She was just slightly uncomfortable with having the Slave she wanted also be part of her own genetic structure: she had kind of wanted a playmate in the fullest sense of the word, one which she might have privately enjoyed as a bendy sex toy. But she could buy enough of those.
So naturally Haloq who eventually wound up carrying this first Splice of hers laughingly grumbled that it would fall to the responsible one - and the one of higher Status?
It had taken a little longer than they expected for Haloq to acquire her Sixth Degree status. She'd taken her time learning everything as carefully as she could, because she didn't want to make any mistakes later, on her own. The business of Breeding was cutthroat: hardly any higher Degree Breeders would share secrets to those who weren't already apprenticed to them, and certainly if one made a mistake they'd be the laughing stock of the community for decades. Haloq wasn't interested in being laughed at.
She rather more enjoyed the praise that her peers gave her, when she had located two further contributors to the mix she was making for Bhez. Their coloration was so similar that any extra material that she might forget to work on would merely be duplicating rather than canceling out the more desirable dominant colors, while the powers and few mutations would clearly work to their advantage. Bhez's only seeming mutations were that her coloration was mixed, and her eyes would change constantly - and those things didn't really qualify as mutations, so far as the Breeders were concerned. She didn't have horns sprouting from her forehead and she certainly didn't have some skin disease.
Bhez was told to look at the charts, and she did so with a bit of confusion. "What exactly am I looking for, Haloq? You know I only kept up with your studies to see if I could pronounce half the words you read."
"Your son," Haloq waved her red-orange hand over the long printout, "I think you'll find him to your liking. I'll carry him, just to prove that I can. I'm actually starting to look forward to it."
Bhez and her brother looked at each other, and then around at the machinery in the room. Zherxee asked, "so... where exactly is this offspring, if not on paper?"
Haloq grinned and held up a small vial, silvered to prevent unnecessary ultraviolet exposure. "That's what he's here for," she tossed her head at another Breeder, one who was a Fourth Degree but had agreed to do their cell insertion.
"I have to say that your work is a pleasant surprise compared to some of those others this year," he said, looking over the lab, "and I also would like to add that if you ever - ever - need an assistant or want to start a full clinic, I'd leap at the chance to work here."
Haloq laughed brightly, "get your own lab!"
They disappeared shortly, and within half an hour the strange deed was done. Haloq had been taking hormone treatments and using an advanced pheromone system to tell when she was most likely to have been fertilized, had this other Breeder help her remove an egg of her own, and then one from Bhez, then the other two donors - neither of whom were female. She worked on those cells for three weeks, first having to examine each one completely. Her disappointment in her own cells was tempered with the success of the experiment. She knew after reading the full DNA printout that there would be few if any mutations and just the right kinds of subtle powers for her friend.
Bhez didn't even have to pay for this one, it was the project that she'd announced as her 'final' for the Sixth Degree program. Once the fertilized egg mixture was printed out and registered with her instruction college, she'd been awarded the Degree - everyone knew that it would be a success. Now if only everything during her induced pregnancy would go properly, the child would be well known in her circles!
Zherxee seemed to be feeling left out. While he and his sister shared practically everything under the sun, including their sexual pleasures, Haloq warned them away from including their genetics. Haloq assured him that while the project with his sister might have benefited from having his genes in there too, there would always be far higher chances for serious mutations, and besides, he didn't want a Slave as a child. Bhez seemed okay with having one-quarter responsibility, now.
The trio had to briefly split up, while Haloq was going through her pregnancy. Bhez took over more of their father's estate sales and art exhibit management, while Zherxee landed himself a Hold on some obscure island. What he wanted with an island was beyond anyone's guess.
At last, after an exhaustive year for everyone, Haloq invited the pair of siblings back to her lab for the birth - to hopefully pass on this wonderful heavy gift she was building.
True to form, the child was as expected - named Qhaleb, born Slaved, he had patterned skin of deepest brown with violet markings on fingers and face, metallic pale green hair, and a mix of tan and dark brown to his eyes that sparkled. When Bhez saw this wet, loudly mewling child that was somewhat hers, and felt suddenly a strange connection to him, she knew that the free price tag on this work was something she'd have to work on rectifying - Qhaleb was well worth every work of art in their collection, and just as proudly displayed.

"Is she going to be called my sister, or is it okay to not tell her that part?" Qhaleb asked his Lady/mother, who glanced at Zherxee. The daughter that Haloq gave him was a far more conventional splice, just the two of them, and had a stronger psionic presence in everyone's mind than her ten year old sort-of-sibling.
"She is Qez, until she passes her exams," Zherxee announced, "and no, currently she is not your sister."
Qhaleb nodded. He was an extremely practical young boy. Since he knew his place, but also knew his lineage, and was almost painfully intelligent, he would often ask questions like that. No one felt the need to hold back their responses, either. He was a Slave - therefore he was not a relative. If he eventually Inherited a title above that, certainly he could call his genetic sister-and-a-half whatever they liked. But not until then.
He accepted that, easily and completely. His mother commanded him not to dawdle with his new not-relative, and he came along with her when they were needed at the Gallery.
"We've got to go, sorry, sweets... Haloq, when you're able, I've got a friend who has been looking for someone to help him produce an heir, and I figured you would be up for a bundle of money."
"As long as they don't need me to squeeze another child out," Haloq sighed with a broad grin, "I'll be ready but not for about another year."
"You're getting all motherly suddenly?" Zherxee chuckled. There was something so happy about their Breeder friend when she was holding on to the child she'd born - her second, and she was barely even fertile! Either the accomplishment of having beaten all natural odds and doing so, or just the rush of natural hormones after the birth, made her beautifully happy.
Haloq bundled the baby into her father's arms, while resting comfortably in the Hold that Qez would know as her home. Mada was a very good place to raise a child, but she was born on the island where the famous new Tumbling Mist resort rested. Most probably, she'd be turning into a Breeder like her mother, since Haloq assured Zherxee there was some extremely beneficial spontaneous psionic change in her genes.
The dark red-violet of her skin still glistened, but she was alert and wide-eyed already. Qez gurgled, stuck her hand up into the air right into her father's eye. "You sure he's not yours?" Zherxee asked after his sister, but she had already left the room.