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Malachite barged into the study without knocking, like he always did, and Luks barely glanced up from his desk. “Shut the door,” he told the boy, who quickly complied. The look Luks gave him when he turned back around, however, wiped the smirk off Malachite’s face.
“What’s wrong?” the younger man demanded, approaching the desk. Luks said nothing, just continued to stare at him contemplatively, soberly, while he toyed with a silver pen that flashed in the overhead light. “Luks?”
“I spoil you,” the older man finally commented, voice neutral.
Malachite’s face exploded in a blinding grin. “Yeah, I know,” he agreed, leaning on the edge of the desk. “I like it.”
“I’m too lenient with you,” Luks continued, as if the boy hadn’t spoken. He rose gracefully and moved around the desk, still holding the silver pen. Malachite began to feel uneasy. “I let you overstep your boundaries.”
“Luks, what are you talking about?” the younger man insisted, perturbed. He hated it when his master started doing the whole ‘I know more than you do’ s—t. Even if it were true in most cases.
“What am I talking about?” Luks repeated, and Malachite knew he should really have stopped to figure it out on his own. Luks’s voice held just a hint of threat as he continued, “I’m talking about you not being home on time, for starters.”
The younger man faced his master indignantly as Luks circled him. “That was only once this whole week!” he protested.
“Three times,” Luks corrected smoothly. “And that’s three times too many. If I tell you to be home at a certain time, you’d better be in that door by that time, even if I’m not here yet.”
“Fine,” Malachite ground out. He was getting antsy at Luks’s constant movement around him. “I just get busy with my friends in town, is all—“
“Another thing,” Luks interrupted. “’Friends’ are a privilege for you, Malachite. Not a right. They don’t take precedence over your duties. They don’t take precedence over me.”
“Well, no, of course not, Luks,” Malachite agreed, confused. “I know that, I would never—“
“You would never?” the older man barked. “You would never.” He shook his head, incredulity only slightly feigned. “Last week you invited your ‘friends’ here without my permission—ate my food, watched my TV, helped yourselves to my hospitality. Without even bothering to ask me first.”
Luks’s steel blue gaze was so accusatory Malachite felt himself squirm under it. “But you said it was okay!” he reminded his master, a slight tone of pleading creeping into his voice. “You told me they were welcome here.”
“Of course I said that then,” Luks clarified, as if it should have been obvious. “They were all sitting there staring at you. I was trying to help you save face. Another example of my overindulgence.”
“Well, if you think I’m undisciplined, why don’t you do something about it?” the younger man suggested hotly. With another master, such a comment would have been an invitation to disaster, but Malachite wasn’t afraid that—
“Oh, I intend to,” Luks assured him, and Malachite’s green eyes widened fractionally. “I intend to remind you of your place.”
The boy licked his full lips unconsciously and watched his master prowl the study. He was a little afraid at this unexpected response—and a little excited as well. Luks stopped before him and pulled on the end of the pen, telescoping the metal out a good three feet. Malachite waited a moment for the whips or chains or spikes to appear, but apparently the slender stick was the only item Luks felt was necessary.
“With that?” the boy snorted, breaking into a smirk. “You’re going to teach me a lesson with that?” Luks’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “Come on, Luks, that’s like a toothpick or something.”
A slow grin, tinged with evil, slid across Luks’s face, and the derisive expression began to fade from Malachite’s. He really needed to stop underestimating his master, the boy decided.
“I think you’ll find,” Luks assured him slowly, a bit smugly, “that this”—he twirled the metal stick—“has quite a bite. Enough to keep even you on your knees.”
“Yeah?” Malachite replied recklessly, disbelief obvious.
“Yeah,” Luks told him, and slapped the younger man hard across the back of his knees with the switch.
It was like a tongue of fire licking across his flesh, and Malachite’s legs almost gave way as he gasped and clutched the edge of the desk for support. He wanted to look back and make sure his master hadn’t switched to a cat o’ nine tails when he wasn’t looking, but a second blow to the same general area brought him fully to his knees and drove most rational thought from his mind.
“I know you’ll heal up from this in just a few days,” Luks told him, administering a stinging slap across the younger man’s back that left him on all fours. “But I don’t want you to think I’m just doing this for my own enjoyment.” Smack! across the boy’s a-s. “Are you paying attention?”
Malachite strained to focus on his master’s voice amid the haze of sensation assaulting him. “Yesss...” he gasped out.
Whack! across his shoulder blades, and Malachite bit his lip to keep from crying out. “What was that?” Luks demanded sharply.
“Yes, Master,” the boy told him quickly. “I’m listening.”
“Good,” Luks decreed, circling the beautiful, quaking figure on the floor before him. He knew better than most the strength Malachite possessed, and if he truly wanted to Luks had no doubt the boy could leap up and break him in half. The fact that Malachite accepted his authority over him and stayed on the ground, trusting that Luks wouldn’t push him too far, was one of the most thrilling aspects of this encounter. Luks had to remind himself not to rush things, however, that he did have a disciplinary purpose as well.
“For the next four years, I am the ruler of this entire country,” Luks continued, punctuating his phrases with slaps of the thin metal rod to the boy’s legs, back, and buttocks. “Try to comprehend the enormity of that position. I should live in Metropolis, as it is the capital city. But instead I live here, and I commute an hour to work each day, and an hour back at night. Why do I do that?”
Malachite was breathing hard now, braced on all fours, little whimpers escaping from him that threatened to send all of Luks’s thoughts straight south. The metal switch had cut through his clothing, especially the thin material of his green t-shirt, leaving faint drops of blood streaked on the fabric. Luks waited a moment for the boy to answer, breaking the pattern of blows, then whacked him vigorously when no response was forthcoming.
“I said, why am I living in Small Valley instead of Metropolis?” he repeated forcefully.
“Because of me,” Malachite panted, eyes tightly shut.
“Elaborate,” Luks ordered, laying the switch sharply across the boy’s shoulders.
Malachite struggled to convince some blood to move back to his brain, to convince his nerves to lessen their tingling, if only for a moment, so he could produce the semi-intelligent answer his master demanded. “I hated Metropolis,” he finally spit out, getting rid of the words as quickly as he found them. “I got in trouble there. You wanted to give me room to—“ He swallowed painfully, sweat stinging the shallow cuts on his body. Luks had not paused in his discipline during the boy’s explanation.
“Room to what?” the older man prodded.
“Room to run around, work off my energy.” It was the best the boy could come up with under the circumstances, and Luks stilled and contemplated it for a few moments. The break in the stream of blows was equally a relief and a torture, Malachite found. When the next thwack finally came the boy let out a groan he was certain they heard all the way down in the kitchens.
“So we’re in Small Valley because of you,” Luks summarized, and he might have been talking economic policy to a group of his advisers from his tone while Malachite quivered and shuddered on all fours at his feet. “I let you leave the house. I let you spend your labor—which is really my labor, because everything you have belongs to me—on the Sevileris’ farm. I let you go into town and f-----g have coffee.” The blood was rushing so loudly in Malachite’s ears he almost missed Luks’s words and he forced himself to focus. To miss the lecture would be as bad as any of the offenses he was being lectured for. “Think about those people you call your friends,” Luks instructed. “Tell me their names.” He liked the interactive part of it.
“Ahnah,” Malachite gasped out. “Pete. Chulyin.”
“And the Sevileris?”
“Yes, the Sevileris,” the boy agreed quickly.
“Now,” Luks continued, casually circling him, “Ahnah is a slave. She’s your pet. How many slaves even have pets? But the rest are freepeople. They go to school. They work on their farms.” With the tip of the switch he encouraged Malachite to sit back on his heels, leaning heavily against the couch with both arms braced along the back of it. The bloodstains would be a b---h for the staff to remove later. “They can speak to whomever they like. They can go wherever they like.” He drew the point of the rod down Malachite’s chest, making him moan painfully when it brushed a nipple. “They don’t wear a wrist tag. They don’t have someone who beats them, makes them crawl on their knees”—all of the boy’s mind focused on the tip of the switch as it traced the evidence of his arousal through his jeans, one burning point spreading fire across his body—“makes them beg and plead”—Malachite willed his body to be still, but his hips jerked anyway when Luks prodded a particularly sensitive part—“all because they came home late. All because they invited friends over.” The switch cut across his chest unexpectedly. He threw his head back against the couch, biting his lip. “Do you know why that is?”
He didn’t know his own name at this point. “Nooo...”
Luks didn’t seem to mind. “Because you’re a slave. Because you’re my slave. Those others? They don’t even have a place to forget. You’re different, Malachite. You’re not one of them. And don’t ever”—whack!—“ever”—whack!—“EVER”—WHACK!—“forget that.”
There was a long pause, which Malachite barely noticed as he tried to still his breathing and keep himself under control. When he finally cracked an eyelid, realizing that he hadn’t felt the switch in several minutes, he saw Luks watching him contemplatively. The boy’s green eyes flickered down to the thin metal rod his master swung casually at his side. The stick stopped suddenly and Malachite glanced up, meeting Luks’s amused blue-grey gaze. “Still with me?” he asked, his voice back to normal.
Malachite sighed and relaxed his posture, dropping his arms to a more comfortable position. He nodded. “Yeah.”
“Good.” Luks dropped the switch on his desk with a clatter that made the boy jump—his nerves were still on edge, and his master smirked at the response. The older man leaned back against the desk. “Come here.”
Luks was pleased to see how quickly the boy complied, crawling across the hardwood floor with only a hint of discomfort. When he finally knelt at the older man’s feet, gazing up with an appropriate mix of eagerness and apprehension, Luks braced his hands on the desk behind him and said with a wolfish grin, “Now, let’s put the best mouth in the country to work...”
**
Ahnah found herself bored more often in her new home than she had been before, when school and work took up so much of her time. The Premier’s library was excellent, of course, and he was generous with all the entertainment devices in his home, but Ahnah was used to her efforts being a little more directed towards school projects or orders at the shop. Much of the time, especially when Malachite did not seem interested in her presence, she simply didn’t know what to do with herself.
So, she wandered, exploring the house and grounds, at least as much as she could while still being within reach of Malachite’s call. Sometimes she found herself merely pacing from one end of the house to the other and back again, as if she expected things in one location to change while she was making her way to the other.
Today she was on her second circuit from the kitchen to her bedroom, thinking that when she got to her room she was just going to drop onto her bed and sleep her boredom away, even if it wasn’t good for her, when the door to Luks’s study opened ten feet down the hall. Ahnah ducked behind a decorative column immediately; Luks usually gave her an odd, slightly distasteful look whenever he saw her, especially when she wasn’t with Malachite.
But it wasn’t Luks who emerged from the study—it was Malachite, and Ahnah’s jaw dropped in horror when she saw his appearance. His jeans and t-shirt were ripped, sliced, the cuts stained with blood and criss-crossing both his front and back, from his knees to his shoulders. He moved stiffly, limping almost, and his face was flushed. He looked like he’d been through some terrible ordeal, and despite the frustration he frequently caused her Ahnah ran towards him, concern etched on her delicate face.
“Malachite!” He seemed startled by her appearance—or perhaps he was still dazed. “What happened? Are you alright?”
“Ahnah... I’m, um—“
She examined the long, bloody cuts—not very deep, but furious lashes nonetheless—from up close, more and more convinced they were deliberate. “How did this happen?” she repeated, when he didn’t answer quickly enough. “We should call a—“ At that moment the girl happened to look up, past his shoulder to the interior of the study—and saw the Premier casually stretching and walking around his desk to his chair.
Nothing happened to Malachite that Luks didn’t know about. And there was only one person Malachite would allow to hurt him, and that was Luks. Ahnah’s concern turned to fury, white-hot and reckless with indignation, and she pushed past the boy into the study.
“What did you do to him?” she demanded, striding across the room to the desk. Vaguely she heard Malachite behind her, trying to placate her, but she ignored him. At the moment, she could outrun him.
Luks glanced at her with genuine surprise. “What?”
“What did you do to him?” Ahnah repeated fiercely. Malachite tried to take her arm but she shook him off, though only his weakened condition allowed her to. “And why did you do it? Why did you hurt him? I thought you cared about him!” She’d never—until that moment—seen any evidence that her new master was even half as brutal as the lurid gossip claimed... and it made her sick to think that perhaps the rumors had indeed been true all along.
Luks’s gaze had gone cold, his jaw tight, as he stared down at the girl who had so brazenly intruded into his study. He barely tolerated her ghostly wandering and bored whining anyway, and for her to dare speak to him, question him even—He grabbed the switch he’d been about to put away and rounded the desk with it. “You want to see exactly what I did to him—“ Ahnah at least had the sense to look alarmed and back away.
Before Luks could pursue her he nearly tripped over Malachite, who had dropped to his knees before his master. “No, no, please,” he asked, voice still rough from their earlier activities. Rough, and uncharacteristically soft. One hand was on Luks’s hip, an intimate gesture that nonetheless didn’t dare direct or hinder his master’s movements; with the other hand Malachite reached back and caught Ahnah’s arm, dragging her frozen form to a more subservient position on her knees. “Please, please, don’t,” he pleaded quietly, burying his face in his master’s shirt. “Please...” He relaxed—fractionally—only when he saw Luks lower the switch.
“Ahnah,” the older man told her angrily, “don’t ever speak to me in that tone of voice again. Do you understand?”
Dumbly, the girl nodded, eyes fixed on his expensive shoes, already feeling a cold chunk of ice in her stomach at her angry outburst. How could she have been so stupid, thinking she could yell at the Premier, her master, like that?
“Get out,” Luks ordered flatly, and Ahnah wasted no time sprinting up to her room.
As soon as she was gone, Malachite wrapped his arms fully around Luks’s hips, nuzzling his stomach gently. The older man sighed, dropped the switch on the desk, and gave in to the temptation to run his fingers through the boy’s dark curls.
Malachite snuggled against the fine linen of his shirt. “Please don’t be mad at her,” he suggested earnestly.
“I’m not mad at her,” Luks assured him finally, adding sharply, “But sometimes I really want to give her a good beating.”
The boy chuckled and craned his neck to look up at his master. “Yeah, me too,” he admitted.
There was quiet for a moment, then Luks asked softly, “Are you alright?”
Malachite nodded and pressed himself closer, trying to get comfortable in his awkward position. Instead his master gave him a firm push away and determinedly put the large wooden desk between himself and the boy. “Good,” the older man replied simply, shuffling through some papers on the desk. “Go on, then.”
Malachite climbed gracelessly to his feet. The shallow cuts had already begun to heal, of course, bringing out the bruises and aching muscles that would have plagued another person in the next day or two. With a last longing look at his master he turned and ambled out the door, aiming for a shower and a nap. “And Malachite?” He stopped and turned eagerly. “I’ll see you tonight.” The boy smiled as he nodded and resumed his journey. Hopefully by evening his master would be feeling a little more... generous with his affections.