by Dan Ackerman
“Yes, Your Eminence.”
“I…Rhys, I mean it. I’ll take your word. Don’t let Raleigh push you around.”
“Yes, Your Eminence.”
Arden pointed to the tablet. “Hand me that.”
Rhys handed it over.
Arden created a new user profile for Rhys and spent some time debating what user privileges to give him. Eventually, he logged out of his own profile and logged into the new one.
He handed it back to Rhys and said, “Daily reports. Honest ones. And message me directly if something’s wrong.”
Rhys raised an eyebrow. He stared down at the tablet and ran a nail over a crack in the screen.
“I mean it. If this goes right…” Arden stopped himself. “It has to go right.”
“I’ll do whatever I can, Your Eminence.”
Arden unfurled himself from the couch. He approached Rhys and then realized he didn’t know why he’d stood. He settled on saying, “The passcode is my birthday backward.”
“Thank you, Your Eminence.”
“Go. Get ready for tomorrow.”
Rhys left with a small bow.
Arden went to check his messages then realized he’d given his only tablet to Rhys. He sent for a thrall to bring him a new one and spent an hour setting up the tablet and adjusting the settings to be exactly the way he liked.
He lost another hour flicking through old pictures. He’d had to download his old albums onto this one and had gotten distracted perusing the memories.
Once he became Autarch all the images of him were ones taken at formal functions by hired photographers.
He tried not to dwell on that, or on how terrible he looked in a lot of them. A corpse, lightly warmed, although the past five years or so had seen improvements.
There was even one of him and his uncle Winslow laughing together at Founder’s Day a few years ago.
He checked his messages, found nothing interesting, and invited himself to dinner with Burton Riley’s family.
He hated every moment of it, but he learned what he needed.
Reports rolled in from Rhys every evening for a week. He offered detailed explanations of what was wrong and proposed careful solutions. Each report ended with the proviso ‘Supervisor Raleigh has declined to take these suggestions into consideration.’
One day, a little after breakfast, Arden received a message from Rhys that read, ‘Please come to h3 assoonehff.’
He frowned at the message. He dressed in a hurry, once again grateful for a wardrobe that he could mix indiscriminately. He grabbed a pair of shoes, plain athletic shoes that he hadn’t seen in ages.
Four.
He owned four pairs of shoes, he realized distantly as he hurried out of his chambers. The silver ones, the gray boots, a pair of black oxfords, and these. They must have been left over from the last time he’d thought to get back into handball.
In Hydroponics Three, he found the thralls lined up against a wall, facing it. That unnerved Arden. A tank of water and crops had tipped onto the floor and the tablet he’d given Rhys lie face down in the puddle.
All the thralls had their eyes trained on the floor and their hands at their sides, as motionless as toy soldiers. A few of them were wet. He picked out Rhys from the lineup, a little taller than most, and not quite as still. He had his hands clenched, balled in the soggy, beige fabric of his trousers; they quivered ever so slightly.
“What happened?” Arden asked him as he stepped around the puddle.
Rhys lifted his head and turned around marginally.
“I said don’t move!” Raleigh roared.
Arden’s head whipped towards Raleigh’s office.
The man stomped out and over to Rhys. “What part of that didn’t you understand?”
“I asked him a question,” Arden said, keeping his voice low.
Raleigh looked over. “Your Eminence! Oh, I’m…these thralls, they’re out of hand today. I apologize for the mess.”
Arden glanced at the thralls again.
Something about them motionless and facing the wall really unsettled him. It reminded him of a Hollow Night ghost story. “Turn around, face forward.”
The thralls obeyed almost in unison.
“What happened?” Arden asked.
“Not to point fingers, Your Eminence, but this one,” Raleigh said and pointed at Rhys, “Got it in his head that he can do whatever he likes. He started giving orders to the other thralls, telling them not to listen to me.”
“Hm. And how did the tank get on the floor?”
“I may have…I made my point with him. How I needed to.”
Arden scanned the thralls.
Rhys had returned his eyes to the floor.
“So, what? You pushed him or something?”
“Your Eminence, with all due respect, you don’t know thralls as I do.”
Arden couldn’t argue that. He barely interacted with most thralls. “So…this sort of discipline is common here?” A mild disquiet made its home in his stomach.
Raleigh lifted his chin. “I do what I have to.”
Arden nodded. He eyed the puddle, the half-grown crops with their broken stems and tangled roots. He gestured towards it and said, “Save what you can.”
A handful of thralls moved forward like slinking cartoon rats.
“Rhys?”
A rustling whisper went through the thralls as they glanced at each other, but especially at Rhys.
“Is Raleigh’s telling of things correct?”
“Yes, Your Eminence.”
Arden nodded again. He paced towards Rhys, then back towards the puddle. He knew already what he needed to do, but he’d never done it before. He circled back towards Rhys and when he put a hand on the thrall’s shoulder, every thrall in the room flinched for him. He tightened his grip. “What did you do?”
“Mr. Raleigh wanted two of them to move the tank. I told them not to move it without four. Sherah has a bad heart already. Mr. Raleigh said one person could move it and…and threw me into it to prove it, I suppose.”
Arden pressed his lips together, gave another useless nod, then said, “Okay.” He couldn’t stop nodding. He sucked in a breath, let it out, and released Rhys. He turned to Raleigh, who seemed just as disturbed as the thralls that Arden had spoken to Rhys. “Charles, you’re fired.”
Raleigh stared. “Your Eminence?”
The thralls whispered.
The ones scooping the salvageable crops froze.
“For years you’ve run not just the least productive hydroponics bays, but the least productive ones by a pretty wide margin. I sent someone to help you and you not only ignored him, but you also destroyed crops and broke one of my tanks. This isn’t your bay, Raleigh. Everything in this bay you’ve rented from me. The thralls, the tanks, the space itself. And now we’re done. I’m terminating our contract effective immediately.”
The system was a bit of a scam, but Bex hadn’t been exactly upright when it came to business deals. Aside from personal property, no one on Eden truly owned anything except the Autarch. Every living space and business, every piece of equipment was rented.
“My family has run this—”
“Get out.”
Raleigh stared, frozen, his eyes bugged out of his face.
“Now,” Arden insisted firmly.
Raleigh stormed out, seething with all the rage of impotence.
The thralls eyed each other.
Arden said, “Well. Get to work. Clean this up. Someone get a new tablet…Get Raleigh’s tablet.”
They scurried around the bay, most of them doing something that looked fairly meaningless.
They had to be shocked.
Arden didn’t think a supervisor had ever been fired before. Suggested for early retirement, sure, but never fired in front of the thralls. Never dressed down with an audience like that.
“I’ll, uh…I’ll get a new supervisor in a few days. You’ll be able to manage until then.”
Rhys nodded.
; “Are you hurt?”
Rhys shook his head.
“You sure? This is definitely covered under worker’s compensation.”
A small smile appeared on Rhys’s face. It didn’t last. He eyed the other thralls, the puddle of water, and the tablet one of the thralls offered to Arden.
Arden used it to revoke Raleigh’s privileges and make his termination official. It took a while to go through and cancel all the contracts. He handed the tablet to Rhys when he finished. “Are you sure you’re alright?”
“Shaken, I suppose, Your Eminence.”
Arden smiled even though he felt like screaming. He put his hand back on Rhys’s shoulder. “Come by tonight. We should talk.”
Rhys nodded.
Arden didn’t want to let go of Rhys’s shoulder. He didn’t want to leave the bay, but he imagined he’d be more of a distraction than a help if he hung around while the thralls tried to get things in order. “Wasteful,” he said. “We couldn’t tolerate that, not with things being how they are.”
“Of course, Your Eminence.”
Arden took his hand back. He hesitated a little longer, then left.
Before lunch, fourteen separate people messaged him about Raleigh. Some of them friends with gossip in mind, some supervisors with concerns.
He took the time to draft a single message to send to them all. Without vitriol, he explained the need for a change in those bays and Raleigh’s unwillingness to meet that need.
By the time Rhys arrived that night, Arden had stopped replying to messages. He hid his tablet under a pillow so he couldn’t hear it vibrate and sat in front of the viewing window. He watched Terra One.
People still lived there, at least, that’s what the most recent scan said.
“Your Eminence?” Rhys murmured as he approached.
Arden turned to look at him. “Come sit with me.”
Rhys sat beside him on the floor in front of the vast window.
“How did the rest of the day go?”
“Fine.”
“I’m going to send you Mason Baker as a new supervisor.”
“Oh.”
“We went to school together. He’s fairly eager to do something other than handball and modeling. He, uh, he won’t have the same ego as Raleigh. His parents, sister, and cousins supervise most of the engineering crews.”
“A wise choice, surely.”
“He’ll do whatever you tell him,” Arden shared candidly.
Rhys raised an eyebrow.
“He will. He’s good at taking directions. It’s why he’s so good at handball.”
“Was his coach a thrall?”
“Oh, shut up, Rhys,” Arden huffed.
“Apologies, Your Eminence.”
Arden stretched out and lay on his stomach. He pressed his ear to the floor. “Come here.”
Rhys followed Arden’s example.
“Listen.”
The sound of music came up through the floor.
“Every night their mother makes them practice for two hours. Lisette Gavroche, she’s a singer. She thinks they’ll all be singers too.”
“I’ve heard them sing on Giving Day.”
“The older girl has a pretty voice.” Arden kept his eyes on Rhys.
The thrall noticed and met his gaze.
Arden waited for Rhys to say something submissive and avert his gaze.
He didn’t do either.
They lay on the floor and looked at each other.
It wasn’t like anything Arden had ever done before. No subservience or defiance, not even the type of false, bubbly flirtation he might get from an interested peer. His friends bustled too much to do something like this unless they’d drank too much to move.
It meant nothing, lying on the floor like this. Rhys did it because he had to do what Arden told him.
Rhys started to hum along to the song that came up faintly through the floor. “Are they practicing for Giving Day already?”
“No, it’s, uh…it gets sung at pretty much every official function.”
“Oh. I wouldn’t know.”
“You’d get just as sick of it as the rest of us.” Arden turned onto his side and used his arm as a cushion.
Rhys folded his arms beneath his chin. He opened his mouth, then closed it.
“No, say it.”
Rhys hesitated, but asked, “Do you do this a lot?”
“More than I probably should.”
In the quiet between them, the buzz of Arden’s tablet resounded.
“Your tablet keeps going off.”
“I’m ignoring it. It’s just people asking about Raleigh.”
“They must have a lot to ask.”
“No, just the same thing a million times.” Arden drew in a breath.
Rhys shared, “The other workers had dozens of questions.”
“Really?”
“Like how you knew my name.”
Arden let out an embarrassed giggle. He’d spent years not knowing the thralls had names. They went by numbers in the programs used to track their work and debts and Arden hadn’t ever had occasion to address one personally. Rhys had gently corrected that misconception a few months after they’d met. “Is it that unusual?”
“For someone of your status.”
“I see you all the time though.”
“I know that,” Rhys reminded.
“You probably want to go home.”
“It was a long day.”
Arden said, “You know, if this goes well…”
“Your Eminence?”
“I just…I really need you to make this work.”
“Of course, Your Eminence. I’ll do whatever I can.”
“Goodnight, Rhys.”
“Goodnight, Your Eminence.”
Arden stayed on the floor listening to the Gavroche children sing.
Arden gave the two of them a week to settle in before he visited Hydroponics Three again. They’d rearranged the general lay out of things for some reason or another. Arden trusted that it made sense.
All the tanks had been sown this time.
He spied a few sprouts with little splints to hold their broken stems together. He peered at them. “Does that work?” he asked the nearest thrall.
The girl seemed shocked that Arden had spoken to her. She whispered, “Uh,” then cleared her throat and added, “We hope so, Your Eminence.”
He smiled at the mending sprout. “Where’s Rhys?”
She kept her eyes on the ground. “I think he’s in the office.”
He nodded and moved toward the office. He hesitated and looked over the girl again. She had to be about eleven, which dipped far below the standardized work age. Only orphans and children with disabled parents got permission to work before they turned fourteen. He wondered which one had landed this girl here.
Her eyes darted towards him, but never reached above his knees.
“What’s your name?”
“Linley, Your Eminence.”
“You’re a little young to be here, aren’t you?”
“No, Your Eminence, I’m fourteen,” she insisted quietly. “Just short, I suppose.”
Short and thin and underdeveloped, too. He put a hand on his hip then tapped his password into his tablet. He glanced around and saw what must have been a few other exceptionally small fourteen-year-olds. “What’s your number?”
“Oh, Your Eminence,” Rhys greeted him.
He looked over.
“We’re honored to have you in Hydroponics Three. We’ve made a lot of changes since you visited last, Your Eminence.”
“Do you have to call me that every time you say anything to me?” Arden demanded.
Linley glanced between him and Rhys.
“You’ve got children working here, Rhys.”
The little girl let out a pathetic sort of squeak.
“Go ahead, Linley, back to what you were doing,” Rhys said. When she didn’t go fast enough, he shooed her away. “Let’s address your concern in pri
vate, Your Eminence.”
“Mmm.” Arden followed Rhys to the office.
Mace looked up from his tablet and said, “You know I almost flunked mathematics every year. This was a stupid idea, Ardi.”
Rhys raised an eyebrow, maybe at the nickname.
Arden squeezed Mace’s shoulder. “You’re not here to do math, Mace.”
“Why am I here?”
“To listen to Rhys.”
Rhys opened his mouth, then snapped it shut, his eyes wide.
Mace snorted. “What are you here for?”
“Checking in my two favorite boys,” Arden said. “Although, maybe not my favorites anymore. You have little kids out there.”
Mace shot a look at Rhys.
“Your Eminence…” Rhys sighed.
“I thought better of you.”
“Those children…we do the best we can for them,” Mace offered. “Light duty, you know, things like that. They’re in rough positions at home.”
“That girl lied to me about her age.”
Mace widened his eyes and looked at Rhys again.
“Your Eminence, if I may explain?” Rhys asked.
“I hope you can.”
Rhys glanced out towards the floor, his eyes following the small form. “Linley works because her mother can’t.”
“Then she shouldn’t lie about her age.”
“She has to. Her mother’s disability isn’t…officially recognized, so Linley couldn’t get permission to work without…modifying a few things in her paperwork. Technically, her mother is considered in dereliction of duty and Linley can’t apply for special work circumstances.”
Arden crossed his arms. “And the other children?”
“Their parents died or were disabled working here. I thought…We thought it might be best if we could do for them what we could,” Rhys said.
Arden didn’t like it. “Her mother’s sick?”
“Something like that.”
“Bad luck.”
Rhys made a face but didn’t say anything.
Arden almost wished he would. He didn’t stop to dwell on that feeling, not sure where it could possibly take him. Instead, he told Mace, “Well, if you think it’s the right thing to do, then I trust your judgment.”
“I don’t know if it’s right, but it’s, uh…it’s the best we can do,” Mace said.
Arden clicked his tongue. His mother had stuck to the rules like glue, not an ounce of leniency, not in business, politics, or at home. “Well. I guess it is what it is,” he finally pronounced.