Sharon Green - Chains Released

“All right, you’ve made your point!” he said suddenly, his tone less than even. “I can’t resist the drug any more than anyone else, so there’s no need to go on with this.”

“Is that your idea of begging for forgiveness?” Risdin asked, having paused in the switching. “If it is, I suggest you think again.”

Flam gritted his teeth again, but was only able to take two more strokes of the switch before he had to admit defeat.

“All right, all right, I’m begging!” he blurted, the hatred he felt thick in his voice. “I’m begging to be forgiven, so you can stop this now!”

“You know, I once begged my owner to stop punishing me,” Char said suddenly, stepping closer to where Risdin stood. “I was crying at the time so I sounded a lot more sincere than you just did, but all my owner said was that he wasn’t ready to forgive me. With that in mind, I don’t think we ought to be ready to forgive you.”

Disturbance flickered across Flam’s face along with a frown, but Risdin grinned and offered the switch to Char. Char looked at the switch for a moment with no expression, then her lips curved into a smile that turned her radiantly lovely and she took the offered branch.

Five minutes later Flam was shouting out his pain and doing a much better job of begging, but Char just kept striking his backside with that switch and all the strength she could muster. Jake understood how the woman felt, but he still had to force himself to keep watching. His own experience with punishment was still too fresh for him to watch without reacting, and when the first trace of blood appeared among the welts he just had to look away.

“All right, Char, that’s enough, I think,” Tain’s voice came a long minute later. “He’s crying just the way you were and he’s also begging, so let’s show him that you have more compassion than your owner did. Give me the switch.”

Jake looked up to see that Flam’s backside now bled in a lot more places and the man was more hysterical than simply crying, but Char was still switching him. The look on her face was frenzied and she didn’t seem to have heard Tain, so Tain didn’t waste her breath repeating what she’d said. She touched Char’s neck in the same way he and Tain had touched those guards the night before, and when Char collapsed into unconsciousness Tain caught her before she hit the floor. Risdin, looking seriously disturbed, took Char from Tain and carried the beautiful woman out of the alcove, the other native women stepping back from where they’d been standing just outside. Once all the women were gone, Tain turned back to Gordi and his supporters.

“You’ve now had the most striking example possible of how much damage slavery can do,” Tain said to the men over Flam’s sobs, undoubtedly seeing, as Jake did, how pale and shaken the three men were.

“That woman is so beautiful that she didn’t have a prayer of not being enslaved, and now she may never recover. She should have been someone’s loving wife and the doting mother of children, but she may never come far enough back to sanity to do any of that. Is being able to use her body any time her owner allows it worth losing her as a human being?”

“No, not for me,” Gordi said at once, his voice rough and his gaze haunted. “What about you, Artro, and you, Dimmis? How do you feel about it?”

“I feel like throwing up,” the larger of the two men said, looking directly at Gordi. “And not just because I know it could be me kneeling there instead of Flam. That woman… She looked afraid when she first came in here, but then the hatred took her over… I don’t ever want anyone to hate me as much as she seems to, and it kills me that I don’t know how to heal her. And it kills me even more that I would have used her happily if she were a slave and was offered to me.”

The smaller of the two had also raised his head, and when Gordi looked in his direction all he did was nod slowly with pain in his gaze. He made no effort to disagree with the first man in any way at all, and when Gordi saw that he nodded.

“Then we’re all agreed,” Gordi said, now sounding more grimly satisfied than shaken. “Slavery has to be ended at any cost before it destroys us completely.”

“But you’re not all agreed,” Tain pointed out, drawing the attention of the three men. “There’s still someone who hasn’t been heard from, so let’s get his opinion. What do you, think, Flam? Have you decided to be against slavery now?”

“I’m going to see you all dead, devil take me if I don’t,” Flam choked out, obviously being forced to speak the truth. “I’ll find those females wherever they try to hide, and once I have them I’ll flay them myself. But first I’m going to see all of you dead, just the way you deserve to be for doing this to me. Dead, I want you all dead!”

By that time Flam was screaming, and Gordi exchanged glances with the other two men. Jake knew well enough what he would do in their place, but the decision belonged to the men who lived on this world.

“I can’t help but notice that Flam isn’t taking any part of the responsibility for what happened to him,” the smaller of the two men said slowly. “Considering the fact that he has more than one slave and never hesitates to knock them around, he ought to have at least hesitated before deciding that this is all other people’s fault. I have a feeling that Flam can’t admit that he brought this on himself, not now and not ever.”

“I’m forced to agree with you, Dimmis,” Gordi said with a shake of his head. “I always thought that Flam just refused to admit out loud that he might be wrong about something, but that isn’t true. Even this hasn’t convinced him he’s wrong, which means there isn’t anything that will.”

“And that leaves us no choice about what to do,” the taller man, who had to be Artro, said in the same sober way. “Flam has the ability to talk the hotheads and empty heads into going along with him, and we can’t let that happen again. This time the matter is far too important.”

“What are all of you talking about?” Flam demanded from where he still knelt, his face twisted into a horrible mask. “How can you just sit there without even offering to help me? You deserve to die along with them, and once I’m out of here I’ll make sure it happens!”

“I’ve heard it suggested that you make a habit of seeing people who don’t agree with you disappear or die,” Gordi said, apparently pretending that

Flam hadn’t just promised to kill him. “Is the suggestion true? Are you the one who sent assassins after me and made it necessary for me to have guards around all the time?”

“Of course I’m the one,” Flam answered with a snort of ridicule, glaring at his questioner. “Too many of those damn fools listen to you instead of to me, but the lousy assassin blew it. But don’t worry, I just found some who can reach you no matter how many guards you have, and all I have to do is pay them. Then I’ll never be bothered by you again.”

Gordi’s jaw tightened when he heard that and he sat straighter, but before he could speak Tain interrupted again.

“I think you three men should be free to treat Flam the way he’s begging to be treated,” she said, then glanced toward Jake. “Come on, Killen.

Gordi and his friends need some privacy right now.” Jake happened to agree with Tain, but it still set his teeth on edge to have to follow her out of the alcove. She led the way to the right, away from where the others were and toward the darkness, and then she stopped and turned to look at him.

“I think we’re almost finished here, and while we’re waiting there’s something I’d like you to do,” she said, looking up at him with no expression on her face. “I want you to cancel every order you ever gave me, and then I want you to order me not to take anyone’s orders, including yours, ever again.”