A Most Personal Property (Ganymede Quartet Book 1) (9 page)

“No, Sir. We had the annuals for
American Adventure
and we had a lot of regular books, but we didn’t get magazines.”

“Well, all right. I’ll tell you about it, I guess, so you know what you’re reading. The story’s called
Drake’s Progress
, and it’s about Captain Theo Drake and his slave George, and his ship, the
Dauntless
.”

“Oh, there’s a ship! Are there pirates in this story, Sir?” Martin seemed delighted at the prospect of pirates, and Henry felt a wild surge of fondness for him.

“
Yes
,” Henry affirmed. “The current part is about pirates, in fact. But let me tell you about what’s happened up to this point.” He looked at Martin standing in the middle of the carpet and frowned. “You can’t stand up the whole time,” he decided. “You should sit down.”

“Very well, Sir.” He had expected Martin to sit on the desk chair, but instead Martin came and sat on the bed, near the end, beside Henry’s feet. “Should I remove your boots, Sir? I think you would be more comfortable if I do.”

“O-okay,” Henry agreed slowly. As Martin pulled off the boots, his fingertips pressed into Henry’s ankles, separated from his skin by just the fine wool of his socks. Martin’s touch felt so warm; Henry did not think other people generated such heat. The feeling of this contact spread in ripples over his body, radiating up from his feet and bringing blood to the surface of his skin. He was mortified; there was nowhere to hide, and surely Martin was wondering what was wrong with his red-faced master, but Martin did not seem to register anything untoward.

Henry took a deep breath and began. “Well, Theo’s an orphan, of course—”

“They’re always orphans, aren’t they, Sir?”

Henry laughed shyly. “Yeah, they are. Theo didn’t have any money or anything when he started out, and he was completely on his own. He’s got lots of skills, and he’s very admirable and handsome, so he did all right for himself, but he was always alone. He had all kinds of adventures out on the frontier and sometimes he’d pair up with an old trapper or prospector for a couple of issues, but then he’d go back to being by himself. So he really didn’t have anybody at all.” This was an important point in Henry’s mind.

“Well, he discovered gold out West, and suddenly he was filthy rich. For a few issues he was just traveling around doing good, giving money to orphanages and stuff, and that was actually pretty boring, and I might have stopped reading it, except then he met George.”

Henry paused for a moment, making sure he had his voice under sufficient control. He didn’t want to gush or sound like a crazy person when he told this next part.

“So, Theo had business of some kind with this guy called Oswald Root, I can’t remember what business exactly, but the important part is that Theo was a guest in Root’s house while they were doing their deal, and
George
was there. He was this Root fellow’s slave, you see, and Theo had never wanted a slave before because he was so self-sufficient, but seeing George’s service made him think that maybe he
did
want a slave after all.”

“Do you know what House George is from, Sir?” Martin asked, head cocked, keenly interested. “He must be from an old House to have made such an impression.” Martin seemed very confident of this.

“They never say,” Henry told him. “And it would probably be a made-up one anyway.” They both considered the likelihood of this a moment, and then Henry continued.

“George is just as good as Theo in his own way,” Henry pointed out. “He’s not as tall, but he’s wiry and handsome and has this long blond hair—”

“Do you like long hair on a slave, Sir?” Martin asked, seeming quite concerned with his answer.

Henry blushed and looked away. Martin’s beautiful hair had definitely been a selling point. “I think it’s all right,” he said. “So, anyway, Theo noticed how great George was, but he was also realizing that Root was kind of a scoundrel and just a really terrible guy, and he decided he didn’t want to do business with him after all. At the same time, he was thinking that it was too bad that George was stuck with such a bad master and wishing he could somehow take George with him.”

“Really, Sir? He wanted another master’s slave? This was in a
story
?” Martin’s eyes were wide and shocked.

Coveting someone else’s slave was simply not done, of course, but this was fiction, after all.

“Yeah, he did. So he told Root the deal was off and he’d leave in the morning, and Root was really angry. And Root was aware that Theo had noticed George, and Root said that George must have been behaving inappropriately and undermining his authority and
trying
to get Theo’s attention, and he decided to
punish
him.”

Martin went pale. “No! Oh, Sir, that’s
terrible
!”

“So Root punished him,” Henry reiterated. “He whipped him himself. And Theo couldn’t just stand and watch this, of course. Poor George was tied to the whipping post and his back was all torn up and Root just kept hitting him, and so Theo shouted out that he’d buy him, and offered so much money that Root couldn’t say no.”

“Oh, Sir! Poor George!” Martin seemed truly distressed, and Henry felt a little badly about upsetting him.

The next part was simply too much, too emotionally complicated, for Henry to relate in detail. Theo had cut George down from the whipping post and carried him off in a most dashing fashion, the slave’s bleeding body draped across his broad shoulders, and had vacated Root’s house immediately. The narrative had given great attention to the damage done to George’s muscular back, as well as Theo’s tender efforts to nurse his acquisition back to health. There had been something so furtively thrilling in all of this, with a quality that Henry had not encountered before in any of his adventure reading, that he’d had to read it over and over again.

But all he said to Martin was, “Well, Theo saved his life and he healed up all right.”

“He must have been so grateful to Theo, Sir,” Martin said, giving every impression that
he
would certainly be grateful in George’s place.

“He’s very devoted to Theo,” Henry agreed. “But it goes both ways, I think. Really, they’re almost more like friends instead of master and slave.”

“Oh!” Martin’s cheeks pinked and he looked slightly flustered. “Well, that’s…nice for them, isn’t it, Sir? That they have a special closeness?”

Henry’s cheeks colored, as well. He’d veered a little too close to his private theories. He believed deeply that there was something more between Theo and George, a true affinity, closer even than the master-slave relationships Henry saw between the adults in his own sphere. There was something epic in their mutual regard, something terribly romantic, though it embarrassed Henry to even think so. Theo and George were devoted to one another. They trusted each other implicitly. And no one came between them.

“They’re very close,” Henry said, averting his eyes from Martin’s face. “So that’s when the story got good, when Theo got George.”

Martin shifted position, getting comfortable. “So, when did they get the ship, Sir?”

“That was after they met Dr. DeSade,”

“Who, Sir?”

“Dr. DeSade,” Henry repeated. “He’s been their nemesis for awhile now. He’s a really good villain.”

“How did they meet him, Sir?” Martin leaned forward, eager to know.

“Well, after George healed up, they went all over the country having adventures, and then they came to visit some of Theo’s friends
here
, in our city, and discovered some fiend was killing slaves and mutilating their bodies, taking out organs and stuff.”

Henry did not bother to relate that there had been a survivor of one of these attacks, a young male slave who was badly scarred as a result. The poor thing had related that the fiend had ordered him to stay still, so he hadn’t run. The fiend had ordered him to be quiet, so he hadn’t screamed. It was a conceit of much of the adventure fiction Henry read that slaves were so conditioned to obey that they would do so in any circumstance, even when such obedience endangered their lives. Although Henry had never known a disobedient slave, he couldn’t believe any real slave would have such a faulty mechanism for self-preservation. Despite the implausibility of the situation, Henry had been drawn in by the lurid descriptions of the murders nonetheless.

“Theo always cares about the downtrodden and the people without advantages, on account of him being an orphan and all, so he wanted to do something about these slave murders—”

Martin interrupted here. “He’s a really fine person, isn’t he, Sir? I can see why you like this story so well.”

Henry knew full well his interest in Theo and George had little to do with Theo’s do-gooder impulses, but he did not share this with Martin.

“So Theo borrowed a slave girl from his friend and he and George set a trap for the fiend, having her wander around alleys for awhile, and eventually he attacked her, just like they’d expected. They ambushed the fiend and his slave and there was a big fight while the girl ran for help. Everyone had knives and Theo got stabbed in the side, between his ribs, but
he
stabbed the fiend in the
eye
.”

Martin shuddered. “Ugh! That makes me feel a little ill, Sir. Stabbed in the
eye
!”

“He deserved it, though,” Henry assured him. “He’s the worst. Anyway, he ran off with his big slave and the police arrived too late to do anything, but when they described the murderer, the police knew right away who it was.”

“What
does
he look like, Sir? How did they describe him?”

“He’s pretty ghastly,” Henry said happily. “He’s pale as a vampire, with black hair and a widow’s peak, and he’s got this sort of red glint to his eyes. Well,
eye
. I really don’t know from the description if he’s supposed to be ugly or sort of hideously handsome.”

Martin laughed at this, and he was so pretty laughing that Henry stopped talking and just stared at him a moment. When he realized what he was doing, he blushed a furious red.

He began talking again to cover for his embarrassment. “His slave is called Turk, and he’s this huge bald guy who never makes any sound at all, even when he’s wounded. Anyway, they had a ship in the harbor and they escaped. And
that’s
when Theo got the
Dauntless
, so he could go after DeSade.”

“What sort of ship is she, Sir?” Martin shifted position again, a wriggle that brought him a little closer to Henry. Henry loved how interested Martin seemed in his retelling of the story.

Henry knew this by heart. “She’s a three-masted, square-rigged clipper with twelve guns, 195 feet long, with a top speed of 17 knots.”

“That’s a fast ship, isn’t it, Sir?”

“I
think
so. I actually don’t know much about ships except for this one,” he admitted shyly. “So, the story got even better once they met DeSade. He’s a really great villain, I think. He turned out to be this fabulously wealthy disgraced surgeon who did all kinds of terrible experiments, and he’s just
terribly
cruel! He’s got an eye patch now, of course, and he’s vowed to repay Theo for the loss of his eye, and Theo wants to bring him to justice for the murders of all those slaves, and so now they chase each other all over the world getting into fights.”

DeSade was a horrible, depraved person, but he’d made a good story so much better, and the
Dauntless
was a big part of that. With the ship came varied and exotic locations, and of course Henry liked those, but what he really appreciated were the descriptions of shipboard life, and the close quarters, that fed into his fantasies.

For example, the description that George had become very tanned from spending so much time on deck without a shirt had given Henry the picture of lithe, brown George swinging from the rigging. He’d had occasion to imagine his heroes both shirtless, George perhaps lying wounded in Theo’s arms, bleeding bravely. He had envisioned Theo’s pale skin next to George’s brown, savored the contrast, and adjusted his thinking so that the wound was not so very serious after all, not so very bloody. He could be made hot and short of breath just imagining their bare skins touching, Theo’s chest pressed to George’s back.

But of course Henry shared none of this.

“Tell me about the pirates, Sir,” Martin urged, leaning forward, so eager to hear everything Henry might say. Henry could not remember when anyone had ever been so attentive and appreciative, and he let himself think that maybe, just maybe, he and Martin might actually become friends.

“That was in the last issue,” Henry told him. “They were in port and Theo was busy helping some do-gooder lady who was taking care of a bunch of sick old people, and he’d left George in charge of the
Dauntless
—”

“Really, Sir? He left his slave in charge?” Martin seemed intrigued by this idea. “Of something as important as his ship?”

“He trusts George with his
life
,” Henry pointed out. “He
trusts
George.”

Martin seemed somewhat unbelieving but fascinated by this idea all the same.

Henry continued. “Anyway, George was in charge, and he went to make arrangements for supplies to be delivered to the ship. There were these unsavory types who’d been keeping an eye on the
Dauntless
and knew Theo had a lot of money, and when they saw George by himself, they jumped him and carried him off to their ship and left a ransom note for Theo. And now Theo’s going to go save him, of course.”

“He won’t pay the ransom, though, will he, Sir?” Martin sounded quite sure of this.

Henry was pleased that this was Martin’s guess. “No, of course not. He’ll
rescue
him. He’ll just
take
him back.” He couldn’t help but grin at Martin, and blushed when Martin smiled in return.

“May I read it to you, then, Sir?” Martin asked. “I’m keen to know what happens next, I really am.”

“It’s right here,” Henry said, picking the magazine up from the nightstand and holding it out for Martin to take.