"Owner?"
Mikki is ready for the day, as always — or as ready as she always is; scrubbed and shivery and skimped on breakfast, ready with paper and pigment stick and tea.
Her Owner is not ready.
Her Owner is always ready.
"Owner?"
Mikki pulls breath into her lungs until she feels as if she might unravel at the seams, hoping to calm her nerves. Feeling as if she is walking into the den of some person-eating serpent or wild beast, she very carefully, very quietly, enters the Owner's sleeping-chamber.
"Owner?" she says again, much quieter than her calls outside the door, which were not themselves loud. "It is — it is morning? I have tea."
The Owner is sprawled on her bed, somewhat covered with a sheet of pale yellow silk. She is arranged as though from a restless night, face turned frowningly from the glimpse of sun falling through the window, a long thigh bared, one arm curled around above her head. She looks as though asleep; she looks as though a demigod.
"Owner?" Mikki says, very quiet and very plaintive. "There is — you would usually be working at this time."
"Working," her Owner says, a rumble from deep in her chest, laden with irony, and nothing else.
"I have tea," Mikki says meekly.
For a second, her Owner does nothing; then she beckons with a single finger, moving not a muscle else. Mikki dutifully enters the snare, allows the Owner to roll onto her side, firmly snatch away the tray of tea and put it beside the bed, then firmly snatch Mikki and put her on it.
"Owner," she says in meek protest, tucked snugly beneath the Owner's chin.
"Tired," the Owner says dismissively, and pulls her sheet right up over Mikki's head, folding her into a too-warm chrysalis of silk and skin in which she does not belong.
"Owner, it is late," Mikki mutters, the soft animal of her weak body melting in agreement with her Owner, into her firm hold.
Her Owner makes a noise contemptuous of the time, and relaxes back into an appearance of sleep.
After some while, Mikki, swallowing, sneaks a hand up to put the back of it to the elf's brow. The sun in shining onto the pillow; the bed is cozy. Perhaps the elf is a perfectly fine temperature.
When she sleepily moans and presses her face into the cool touch of Mikki's small hand, Mikki trembles with fright; but the Owner says nothing intelligible, simply shifts sleepily.
Indolent comfort is not her Owner's way.
Finally, an hour or more later, the elf rouses, irritable, pushes Mikki away from her nakedness, and demands fresh tea, which Mikki escapes to fetch. The Owner reaches the kitchen, in foul mood, before Mikki can return to her; barely touches her tea, demands fruit be squeezed for her instead. Scowls at the juice, too.
"Mikki, work," she snaps, and stalks off toward the workshop.
Mikki and Yanna exchange a worried look; and Mikki hurries after.
It is, somehow, another entire day before an elven soldier sneezes in front of Mikki's owner, and Mikki fails to control the expression on her face enough, and the Owner happens to see it.
The Owner's face goes terribly, terribly blank. Thinking.
"Tea, Mikki," she says finally, in a strange voice, and Mikki blanches and scurries in the direction of the kitchens, where she clings to the edge of a counter and sobs, dry and frantic, blurts only, "Tea!" at Yanna, and tries to stop shaking. This is too much. This time, she will be whipped, or sold, or — something worse, which she deserves. She'd known. She'd known — something. And now the Owner knows she had.
When she creeps back, pale, head down, clutching the tray, the Owner is stalking about with renewed vigour; has called in the soldiers, divided them into groups, is lecturing the commander. Perhaps Mikki is to be given to them. She tastes bile.
The Owner is holding forth in the elven tongue; Mikki grasps some of what she says. "A hypothetical," the elf snarls. "Your army is on the march with humans; they begin to go slower. They show signs — weakness, unpredictable mood, excessive weariness. A sickness. What is the answer?"
"Cull," the commander says, succinct and contemptuous. "Confine it, or it spreads."
"And if it does?"
He shrugs. "Then they pile in the streets," he says, indifferent save for a twinge of disgust at the prospect.
"Weakness," Mikki's Owner says, intensely focused. "Unpredictable mood. Excessive weariness—" and she's interrupted by one of the soldiers, coughing; redoubles her fire. "Coughing—"
The commander looks at her, slack-faced. Looks past her, at Mikki's shaking little figure.
"She knew," he says. "Too small. She knew. The rot in your staff goes far, Blue Eyes—" and he draws his sword as he steps past the Owner, looms toward Mikki, who can only clutch the tea tray and shake her head, no, no, no. She would never.
The Owner's shattering whistle distracts him, a moment; long enough for the golem-reeled tray of tools to crash into the top of his head. Sharp brass instruments scatter; the Owner's hand plucks a flying blade from the air and pushes it firmly through the flesh between the ribs of his back.
"I am the favoured of the Empire!" she says, loud and furious. "Defer to me or die a traitor!" and he dies, and his soldiers sway and seem uncertain, but they hold. They stand. She whirls on them. "Kneel!" she screams, with the force of command.
They kneel.
"Out!"
They flee.
Finally it is only Mikki and her Owner in the workshop, and then her Owner advances on her. Mikki shakes hard enough for tea to spill, and attempts to stammer an apology for it, tears rolling down her cheeks, eyes on the bloody blade in the elf's hand.
When the Owner follows her gaze, she makes a noise — tch — and throws it away carelessly. Crouches to bring herself eye to eye with Mikki, and places a palm to each side of her head, denying her the solace of looking down.
"Mikki knew?" she says.
"Yes," Mikki sobs.
"How?"
"You — you sneezed."
Woman with Blue Eyes nods, slowly. "I sneeze. Mikki says she knows," she suggests. "What happens?"
Mikki closes her eyes, shivers.
"Owner laughs," she says.
"Owner laughs," her Owner says softly, and carefully wraps Mikki in her arms, puts her head to Mikki's chest, sighs.
They are silent together for a long time.