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Nine

Leander stood still, his hands moving behind his back, his chin up.  He wasn’t meeting her eyes, but he could see Sylviane anyway.  And she did not look like he had just defied her.  

“I just mean…” She faltered and tilted her head.  “Here, come downstairs with me.” She reached for his hand, dropped her hand, and led the way.

Leander followed.  If he tried to gauge forty feet when he couldn’t see her, he was going to get a headache.

Even more of a headache.

She waited until they were downstairs, through what looked like a very well-appointed bar, and into a gym some colleges would kill for, before she said anything.  “Okay, look. It’s your body, and you can do what you want with it as far as I’m concerned. You’re a fae bodyguard. You could look like Poindexter and still kick ass, right?”

“…Right…”  He had no idea what she meant by, well, anything anymore.

“But you look like this.  I’m sorry, I thought that was, well, I thought it was your choice.”

“Work camp.  Turning big rocks into smaller rocks.”  He thought about that. “Before that, uh.  Combat training. Different muscles. Would take work to get those back.  Could probably do it, though.”

She shifted, looking up at him, taking a step back like she was trying to give him some room. “I’m sorry,” she repeated.  “Work camp? Like, a prison?”

Leander found that he could smile, if grimly.  “Something like that. Not for breaking any laws, though. Just ended up pissing off the wrong people.”

“And really … breaking little rocks from big rocks?”

“Hrmph.  Some of it.  Hard labor.” He rolled his shoulders and made himself look at her.  So. You thought I liked keeping in tone?”

“Yeah.  I mean.  Most guys I meet who look – who are as strong as you, as muscular as you, they do it on purpose.  In a gym.”

“Lucky,” he muttered.

“Me?  Or them?”

He didn’t answer.  He wasn’t sure if there was a safe answer.

“I’ll tell you what.”  She regarded him thoughtfully, slowly. Leander resisted the urge to back up, to look at the ground.  Damnit, just because he was a slave didn’t mean he had to act like one! “You have to go wherever I go, right?”

Now he shifted backwards.  He’d had people who couldn’t give him orders abuse his orders enough times to recognize the look.  “That’s what your father said, yes.”

“So for, let’s see.  An hour every day, as long as it doesn’t interfere with my classes or y other obligations — mostly Dad — I’ll go wherever you want.  Anywhere.”

“What?”  He took another step backwards and growled, at her, at himself.

“Easy.”  Instead of looking amused, she looked apologetic.  “It’s a peace offering, I swear.” The world rippled faintly with the truth of her oath.  “That’s it. An hour, every day.” She pulled her phone out and checked the time. “Starting now.”

“What?”  She was telling the truth.  She was… what was she doing? “What are you doing?”

“Where do you want to go?”  She sounded patient and sincere.  Leander shifted his weight back onto his heels and stared at her.  “If we could go anywhere for an hour, where would you go?”

“Open air.” The words came out suddenly, almost an explosion.  He decided fuck it and let them come.  “Sky, I want to see the sky and feel the air and just – well.” He cleared his throat.  “See what’s around here. The neighborhood.” That would make sense, right, being a bodyguard?  “I want to know what I’m looking at, guarding you.”

“All right.”  She offered him her hand.  “Let’s go take a walk around my neighborhood.  There’s a really nice park at the end of the road, how’s that sound?”

“Why are you -” why are you being so nice?  He shook his head.  “Let’s go, then.”

They didn’t talk until they were outside the house, walking down the sidewalk, Leander because he had no idea what to say, and Sylviane – well, he wasn’t even going to try to guess what was up with her.

“Because I don’t want to be That Bitch, okay?”  They were two houses down from her father’s house, the sun warm on Leander’s face and the breeze feeling like it was blowing away rock dust and slave-store stench that he knew wasn’t actually there.  “The one who treats her bodyguard or the house staff like crap because she can, or because she isn’t where she wants to be, or whatever. Since I don’t want to be That Bitch, I’m, uh. I’m going to try being nice, instead.”

He looked down at her and thought about that.  “All right.”

“All right?”

“All right.”  He nodded. “I’ve met That Bitch.  Been… beholden to her. So I can see why you wouldn’t want to be her, if you’ve met her.”  He looked around. The neighborhood was definitely rich: fences on every property, gates on every fence, a large amount of real estate.  Nobody but someone in a landscaper uniform in the front yard; they’d all be in the back, then, being social without risking the rabble seeing them.  “How long have you lived here?”

“Maybe… ten years?”  She considered the matter.  “Yeah, I was just going into Junior High, and I was very irritated about moving, and then Dad ‘made it up to me’ by enrolling me in a private school with all these rich kids.”  She wrinkled her nose.

“Ah.”  He cleared his throat.  “You um. You know you’re rich, right?”

“Well… yeah.  We are now. And I suppose once I really started paying attention, I realized that Dad had probably been rich for a while.  There were things that didn’t make sense any other way. But we were living on the other side of the city, in a nice apartment that was good for the two of us, and Dad went to work during the day and I went to school.  Not like – well. Dad goes to Meetings of Some Sort and I went to College Prep, and now I go to college, and a third of the classes I’m taking are so I have some idea what he’s doing in the end.”

“That sounds like-”  If he was being honest, it sounded entirely foreign and at least half gobbledygook, but Leander wasn’t used to rich people who actually talked to him, so it might be normal for all her knew.  “It sounds… complicated?”

“Well, I mean, if Dad wants to leave me the business – and I guess he does, because his only other heir is not really, well, let’s not talk about him…”

“Okay.”  In his experience, ‘let’s not talk about’ were generally people he didn’t want to hear about anyway.

“So if he wants me to have the business…” she trailed off and peeked at him.

Leander wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say.  He looked around; no, nobody appeared to be listening.  He didn’t have any orders against Workings – he didn’t have any orders against Workings!  – so he tried an Idu Working on the air and the electromagnetic fields, a sort of Know thing that should let him sense most sorts of surveillance.

It had been a long time since he’d just done a Working, and he could feel that the “muscles”, for lack of a better word, were atrophied.

He was, though, pretty sure that nobody was listening to them.  So what was the look for?

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