No Longer Chained » Places

         Marcus obediently followed his new mistress from the tailor's shop. It felt good to be clothed again, and he carried a small package full of other spare items of clothes too. So. It seemed that this woman, Valera, was one of the kinder mistresses in the town. Marcus smirked as he dutifully walked three paces behind her, his eyes respectfully placed on the ground before him. He didn't talk, or speak, as was custom for slaves.

As they walked through the gates to her home, Marcus stole glances up and around at the buildings. A stables, and a garden. The stable peaked his interest. He had always enjoyed working with horses, and in particular he enjoyed working with those that would be put aside for being too willful, or too risky. He had always had a good hand with animals, finding the solace in them that he would rarely find in another person. Perhaps it was just because they didn't mind if he met their gaze. But no doubt he'd be put to work in a garden. He had worked well enough in gardens before, but had a tendency to pull up flowers, accidentally mistaking them for weeds. He smirked as he thought of it.

Marcus glanced up as his mistress was addressed by another slave.

"Miss Valera, Shaun is dealing with the problem as you instructed." The man said submissively. He instantly irritated Marcus. So demure, and so quiet. As though he had no personality of his own. Marcus' lips twitched as he followed, listening to the conversation. So a slave had rebelled? Stolen something? It all sounded very familiar. In his previous places of work, Marcus would have been promptly slapped by the mistress and sent straight out to that god damned pole in the center of town. The memory of it made him scowl.

Entering the room behind Valera, he saw the slave in question and bit his lip. His hair was red, the colour of the blood that stained his skin. He had known a mistress once who had been so adverse to red heads that if she deigned to have one work for her, he would be shaved first - from head to foot - regularly. The memory of one of her bald and hairless was incredibly amusing for him. And he coughed quietly to push away the laughter that would probably get him beaten.

This slave, Ian, seemed to be frozen with terror looking at his mistress. To Marcus, his mistress didn't look at all threatening as she regarded the rebel before her. In fact, she looked almost distant from him, until she snapped at him and grabbed his chin. The sight was almost comic as the slave recoiled. The abrupt change in stance from the woman herself though was what interested him. Either she was a very cold and calculating person, which he very much doubted, or she knew that fear was often the best tool for making a slave obedient. Either way, she was good.

Marcus quickly wiped the thoughtfully amused smile from his face as his mistress glanced at him.

"You will sleep in the cellar tonight, without dinner. Tomorrow we'll see. I'm too tired to deal with this anymore. Shaun, see to it that he is put downstairs immediately. Also, I don't want anyone outside my estate knowing what he has done." The mistress spoke, and she looked tired. Marcus observed this silently, his gaze fixed downwards. As she passed him and told him that he would be fed and looked after, he muttered a soft "Yes, my Lady. Thank you, ma'am"

As soon as she had left the room, Marcus looked up and stretched, and winked at the red head in front of him before following one of Valera's older slaves to his quarters, and allowed his back to be cleaned and seen to by another slave. He then enjoyed a hearty meal to fill his belly. Maybe his new mistress wasn't so bad after all.