“I worry that making you do things you don’t like will make you unhappy.”
“Pleasing my master makes me happy.” Though how the heck I was supposed to do that, when he had such convoluted ideas, was a mystery.
He was staring at me with that strange intensity again. Long seconds ticked past, until he finally spoke. “And how do you know if you have pleased your master?”
“If he is pleased with me, he will reward me.” It was a statement the trainers had repeated a thousand times.
“What sort of rewards do dimari get?”
I glanced at the nearest tables, aware that some topics were not suitable for public discussion. Thankfully, we were largely alone for the moment. “Sex,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Praise. Attention. We might be allowed to sleep in the master’s bed, for example.”
“I see. And that’s what you want most of all? To know that you’ve pleased your master?”
“Yes, sir,” I replied. I was just so very confused about whether or not I was doing that.
He squeezed my hand. “Thank you,” he said, his tone contemplative. “I think I understand that now.”
He did? Okay, but… wasn’t that the fundamental principle of what a dimari was? Someone designed to please their master?
“Come back into the café,” he instructed me, standing up. “I’ll get us some food.” I followed him in and sat at the table he pointed me to. He went to the counter, without asking me any further questions, and a few minutes later, came back with a tray of food. “There’s a camel and salad sandwich,” he said, setting the plate in front of me. “And I got you some coffee as well.”
I froze. Did he seriously want me to…? My mind raced. Had the morning really been going that badly? Okay, I’d had a minor tantrum, which was really not acceptable, but we’d made some excellent progress with the clothing. But now he was giving mecoffee?
But maybe… Maybe this was just a misunderstanding? “Sir?” I said, my voice thin, my heart pounding in my chest.
“Yes?”
“Are you aware, sir, that caffeine is toxic for Vangravians?”
His eyes opened wide, and he grabbed the coffee cup, snatching it back. “Fuck. Shit, I’m so sorry. No, I was not aware of that. God, I’m sorry. I am absolutelynottrying to poison you here.” His denial was so emphatic that I had to smile. He took a deep breath, and then said, “Thank you so much for telling me. That was absolutely the right thing to do. And I’m going to make that a standing order from now on; If I tell you to do anything that’s going to harm your health, please tell me. It doesn’t just have to be food. It could be handling certain cleaning chemicals, or standing in the sun when it’s too hot, or whatever. Although…” He frowned, his shoulders sagging a little. “I’m not sure how that would work, actually. I mean, we’re going to be going on missions that are necessarily dangerous. So is there a difference between ‘Please drink this coffee’ and ‘Cross this bridge with me while Geshtoch try to shoot us’?”
I tried to hide my amusement, but I don’t think I was entirely successful. “I have been trained to understand the nuances of different situations,” I reminded him. I’d said much the same thing in bed that morning.
“Right,” he said. “Good. So, no coffee. Is there something else that Vangravians can have that’s suitable as a generic social drink?”
I glanced up at the menu board again. A number of the items had pictures next to them, and there was one that looked like what I was looking for. “Does the café sell meloto juice?” I asked.
He skimmed over the menu board and nodded. “Yes. It does.”
“Meloto juice has a mild stimulant effect on Vangravians. Much like coffee does for other species.” Both coffee and the meloto plant had become popular across a significant number of planets. Coffee, with its stimulant effect, had created a stir when it had arrived in the region, with half a dozen species taking an instant liking to it. The meloto plant, on the other hand, had originated on Basub, but it was a hardy plant, and anutritious one, so it, too, had spread rapidly to other planets. It grew large, purple fruits that were used to make juices and desserts.
“Good to know,” my master said, before going to buy a cup.
By the time we made it back home, it was the middle of the afternoon. We’d found a comm to buy for me, then we’d stopped at a supermarket, ordering more food for the week that would be delivered to my master’s house that afternoon. My master didn’t ask me to make any more decisions, choosing the model of comm for me, and simply asking that I push the shopping cart for him around the supermarket. I paid attention to the types of foods he was buying, so that when it came time to order more, I would be able to get the right things.
The shopping was delivered shortly after we got home, and I helped unpack the food, with my master showing me where everything should go. And then finally, after a bit of awkward fumbling, my master gave me a list of instructions that I actually understood. He showed me around the house, detailing what needed cleaning and how often. Vacuum the floors once a week. Scrub the bathroom thoroughly once a month. Laundry twice a week, or whenever there was enough of it to fill the washing machine. It was a relief to have tasks to do and a sense of routine to give structure to my days.
Early in the day, I’d been alarmed when I’d discovered that my master didn’t have any clothing prepared for me. His disastrous mission had been disruptive, of course, but planning clothing and bedroom arrangements should surely have been done a week or two in advance? And his instructions for cleaning the house had been haphazard, almost as if he was making it up as he went along. My mind flitted back to the moment we’d first met, when he’d been so disappointed to see me, and hadn’t even known I was Vangravian. There had been a dozen more instances of small details that seemed slightly out of place. He hadn’t known about my combat skills. Colonel Henderson hadn’t seemed prepared to have a dimari in the military. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like…
Like my master hadn’t been expecting me to arrive at all.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Aiden
“So you have actually slept with him, then?” Bryce asked me, two days later. We were having coffee in the same café where I’d had lunch with Kade, who was currently at home, weeding my small garden beds.
I flushed, all the justifications for it suddenly sounding weak. The fact that I felt the need to justify it at all was already a red flag. “Yeah. I mean, to a certain extent, yeah,” I mumbled.
