“What did you do?!” Ghint’s already wide eyes seemed ready to pop out as he stared at Neblii (the slave of the College of Winterhold, not the mage who claimed to have invented mass translocation but whose claims have been widely discredited). “You must have made ol’ Urag mad!”

 

Neblii shook her head as she scrubbed the bottom of the pot. “It wasn’t him.” I was already a slave, she didn’t add. He just didn’t treat me like one. She bit her lip and forced back a fresh splurge of tears. “How…how is he?”

 

She regretted asking the moment the question slipped from her lips – it wasn’t her business, she didn’t have the right to ask – but Ghint didn’t seem to notice.

 

“Even grumpier than usual. Most people are too scared to ask him anything. Or even go to the library at all, unless they have to. Only, like, three students are brave enough to be there for more than a few minutes.”

 

Neblii nodded and forcibly quelled the myriad of follow up questions she was desperate to ask. Fortunately, one of them was answered without her needing to.

 

“One of the students is there all the time, in fact. She always has ol’ Urag’s baby. I didn’t even know he had a baby. He’s so cute! For an orc, I mean. Green skin is kinda creepy, though, don’tcha think?”

             

Neblii smiled. “No.” Her smile faded as Ghint’s words rattled around her head. A student was taking care of her baby? And was around Urag all the time? How could…

 

She stopped herself, shook her head. Chonji was not her baby. He never had been. And if Ur…Master, she reminded herself, asked another student to watch his son, that was his right. He was busy, after all. She swallowed the clog of emotions that threatened to overwhelm her. Fortunately, Ghint was already on to a different topic.

 

“Isn’t it cold to be naked all the time? That has to be embarrassing, too. I don’t know why slaves have to be naked. If I was in charge…”

 

“Ghint!” Both Neblii and Ghint jumped at the sudden authoritative crack of Minyet’s voice as the kitchen supervisor seemed to appear out of nowhere. “Aren’t you supposed to be emptying the traps?”

 

“Yes’m!” Ghint tossed Neblii a quick shrug and grin, then raced off. The boy never did anything slowly.

 

Neblii watched him go with a faint smile before sighing. Minyet looked as if she was going to say something else but appeared to think better of it and strode away instead and Neblii bent back to the task of scouring the stubborn pot of whatever some bad cook had burned to the bottom of it.

 

Uncounted hours later, she finished scouring the last of the dishes and placed them in the cabinet. The free kitchen staff had finished long ago and the kitchen was quiet, just like the first time she had…

 

No. She shook her head to clear the thought - to remember was to court despair. But the thoughts kept leeching out of the box she kept trying to lock them into, and try though she might, she had not been able to find the spigot to turn them off. She resorted to the only trick she had managed to come up with for those times when her brain wanted to dwell on things best left unexplored - she turned her mind to computing spatial arrays. The necessary focus forced her to let go of all other thought. As the numbers gelled and shifted in her head, she touched her collar.

 

The kitchen was replaced by the room she shared with the others and Neblii’s computations were scattered the moment she saw Shelinng and her bruised and blackened eye. Neblii gasped and scurried forward and knelt in front of her. “What happened to your eye?”

 

“I was sent to an advanced student. He was…rough.” Shelinng shuddered.

 

“Poor thing!” Neblii sat beside her on the bed and gave her a hug. “What happened?”

 

“I’m not sure. He was mad the moment he saw me. ‘I ask for a specific slave and they send me everyone but her!’ then he hit me, fucked me, made me suck the cocks of his friends, then sent me back.”

 

Neblii frowned. “Nord? Average height, dark hair cut stupidly short, dick with a slight turn to the left?”

 

Shelinng laughed. “You know him!”

 

“Merks. He’s going fishing for slaves. Well, a slave.”

 

“Ah. He’s trying to get you.”

 

“Yes. We…don’t care much for each other. I’m sorry you had to bear the brunt of it.”

 

 “It’s…nothing.” Quiet resignation played through her voice, which took on a slight quiver as she added, “Pray you never get that weird Dunmer – he likes to…do things with magic.”

 

“Does he, then? Now I’m intrigued.”

 

“Don’t be. Be afraid instead.” She shivered and Neblii gave her another hug.

 

Neblii was afraid, but not of whoever the Dunmer was. There were only so many slaves in the college and, though it felt as if she had already lived several lifetimes, she was still young – she had decades of life ahead of her, decades of slavery. It was inevitable she would be matched up with Merks, not just once, but multiple – potentially hundreds of -- times.

 

If she survived the first one.

 

She comforted her fellow slave as best she could, though the effort felt meaningless before the gulf of her own growing despair. She wished she had never come to this place, had never met Urag, had never been given the illusion of freedom. All the pain and suffering she had endured with Borkul was nothing compared to the pain of shattered hope and the view of the dark and endless pit into which she had been cast. She had to find the elusive key to letting go or she would be lost long before she died.

 

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