Baron Egan woke up early as a general rule. Lilith was not Baron Egan. On this particular day, Egan had decided to visit the Roblis Estate, which meant that the Roblis’ two kitchen slaves had to be up early to prepare breakfast early for Egan’s visit. Lilith wasn’t a kitchen slave. The head slave had to be up in order to supervise the kitchen slaves. Lilith wasn’t the head slave either. If the head slave was going to be up, he was damn well going to make sure that every other slave would be up, standing around doing nothing with their heads bowed in an ostentatious display of conspicuous consumption when the Baron arrived. And that’s why Lilith was trying not to fall asleep on her feet when it was barely even light out and the Baron was taking breakfast with Sir and Lady Roblis and their eldest son, along with a half-dozen other slaves who had absolutely nothing to do for another hour, which was when the day usually began.
In an effort to keep herself awake, Lilith was concentrating very carefully on what the nobles were saying. “It’s the Royalists, you know,” Baron Egan said in his deep, voice. “They’re hardly better than bandits themselves, you know, trying to drive the kingdom into the gutter for the sake of their barbaric ways.” Lilith had long ago learned to avoid voicing her disagreement, especially not in the company of an esteemed guest like the Baron. She’d like as not be beheaded for being that bold. But she made a mental note to make sure the whole Roblis family paid for their disdain when she took her place in the Lunatic Court.
“I couldn’t agree more,” Sir Roblis said, “as if we haven’t got enough problems with the Charr coming down south. Have you heard?”
“Oh, yes,” Egan said, “the warband that broke through the frontlines, you mean? Headed south to the Wall. They’ll fair about as well as all the others, of course.”
“Oh, of course,” Sir Roblis said, “to be honest I’m more worried about that devourers’ nest. I’ve heard tell that a new breed is growing there, lethally poisonous.”
“Hm, Duke Gaban should look into it,” Baron Egan said, “if he’s not too busy feeding his slaves to the beasts. He spends so much time up there just listening to the screams of the ones who displease him. Honestly, it’s so very…Well, Lunatic.”
“Oh, isn’t it?” Lady Roblis spoke now, “what I wouldn’t give to have so many slaves I could fritter them away on blood sport,” she said the last words with clear disdain. The Lady was mostly silent as the men discussed politics, but quieter still was Sir Roblis’ eldest child Edwin, a fifteen-year old boy who was doing a poor job of hiding the fact that he was ogling one of the larger-breasted slaves. As in every noble family, his parents disapproved of the notion of his being intimate with mere slaves, and as with every noble family his youthful vigor demanded immediate satisfaction rather than properly courting noble women who had the luxury of rejecting of him. Getting away with as much slave intimacy as possible without letting the parents find out was essentially an unofficial coming-of-age rite for noble boys. Lilith had escaped his attentions so far, as it seemed Edwin preferred older girls and she was only a year his senior. This was surely a blessing from a sympathetic Lunatic, Lilith thought, shielding one who was truly a noble from the harsher depravities of living as a slave.
“It does keep the slave population down,” Sir Roblis continued on, “and I have suspected for some time that at least a few of those bandits are runaways.”
“So it does, so it does,” Egan said, “but there are much faster ways to get rid of excess slaves. A good beheading will do the trick much faster.”
“I agree,” Sir Roblis responded, “he could at least do us the favor of recovering the corpses, such that the monks at Ashford could examine the body. Perhaps find a way to cure that poison!”
“That poison seems to have you fearful,” Egan said. Lilith knew something had Sir Roblis on edge for the past week solid, and she had the scars to prove it. The sooner someone or other dealt with this poison, the better.
“Oh, it’s because of the time at the river when a rogue devourer attacked him. He was hardly more than a boy and it caught him unarmed and unarmored, oh, you should have seen the look on his face!” Lady Roblis said.
“M’lady, please, the Baron is hardly appropriate company for such talk,” Sir Roblis said, but Baron Egan just laughed.
“Father, mother,” Edwin said, speaking for the first time, “may I please be excused? I should like to be about my training.” Edwin was hardly interested in training most days, preferring to drink with his friends, but it seemed preferable to him to enduring conversation between adults he was not permitted to insult.
“Edwin, we have company,” Sir Roblis said.
“Oh, let him go,” Egan insisted, “I will have more than enough time to get to know the boy before he takes over the estate, I’m sure. Unless you plan to hunt that devourer yourself, that is,” he finished with a grin.
Sir Roblis forced a small smile at the joke, and said “very well, you are excused, Edwin.”
“Thank you, father,” the boy said, and rose to leave. He grabbed his plate and handed it off to the slave he’d been eyeing, and then made a poor show of stumbling into her, spilling the leftovers all over the both of them. “Gods be damned!” he said, a bit too angry as the porcelain plate shattered on the ground. “You’ll learn to keep track of where your feet are,” the boy began, but Sir Roblis cut him off.
“You get to the training field if you’re so eager,” Roblis said, “and quit making a scene in front of company.” He turned towards Donnel and said “see about getting that plate replaced,” and then returned to his conversation.
Donnel nodded to Sir Roblis and then scanned the waiting slaves. His gaze fell on Lilith, who quickly swallowed down a few of the plague locusts that had started crawling up her throat, suppressing a shudder. Letting a few of the bugs that crawled around inside her out of her mouth in the middle of dinner might be seen as something of a faux pax and she was already on thin ice from her delayed return the previous week, when Verata had showed her how to command the tiny creatures in the first place. Donnel handed her a small money pouch, wordless so as not to disturb the conversation, but the command was straightforward enough, and Lilith was glad of a reason to be anywhere else but sitting around doing nothing. She nodded to Donnel, and quietly slipped away from the room.
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