One of which was the Slave Underground. Slaves talked amongst themselves, they cooperated, they helped each other out in ways that they wouldn't help their own Masters. Especially cruel or hateful Masters (or Mistresses) tended to have accidents. Not from their own slave of course, but some other slave who accidently left a heavy load atop a ladder which somehow or other dislodged at just the right the moment to crush the cruel Master. Or the evidence of wrongdoing which the Master threw into a fire, which was somehow retrieved and ended up in police custody. And so on. Some embellished this to a Spirit Of Vengeance, that the slaves who died unjustly at the hands of a cruel Master sought vengeance from the afterlife.
In truth however, the more sophisticated and observant knew that slaves were everywhere and that many of them felt a certain camaraderie with their fellows. A lot of slaves, particularly domestics and general labor, gossiped incessently and observed the world around them through cynical but practiced eyes. Word of a cruel Master or Mistress got out, no matter how well or ruthlessly the free tried to restrain it. The opposite was also true of course. Particularly kind and benevolent Masters found nice things happening to them as the word got out.
So it was with the clerk at Moon Princess' Kennels. He saw it all, he heard it all, he passed it on through the network.
Ranma Saotome was a kind young man who often consulted and sought to please his slave Makoto. It was fairly common for a favored slave to be given accounting and general run of the Master's business - for quite a few centuries the samurai and nobles both considered money to be beneath their notice as a class. The relationship between Makoto and Ranma went deeper than that, or so the clerk read from his brief meetings with the two and overhearing conversations by Makoto.
Kumori Mizuno was a contract slave, specialist, and she had another four years and seven months on that contract to serve. She'd been worked to the point of exhaustion and forced to do things both illegal and against her contract under her last Master.
As for that Master, he would get what was coming to him. Those who abused slaves harshly, particularly women or children slaves, and went to prison often met "accidents" - a little battery acid sold as heroin perhaps. Trying to get a high and instead having one's nerve endings wrapped in flame. Such things happened. Though if he had done any of this to a young child - there were worse things that happened.
The clerk was middle-aged and a eunuch who enjoyed this job. Though he tended to be fat as many eunuch did, he still found feminine company to be delightful and seeing to their needs (within reason) a fair career. As he was quick to point out, it was this or become a bureaucrat and he was too much a "people person" to be comfortable seeing only stacks of paperwork all day. He'd been here long enough to simply be known as the Clerk. He was familiar with all the stories of all those who stayed here, and only partly because it made for delicious gossip.
He made a few calls, shared a few jokes, and otherwise handled the paperwork. Kumori Mizuno was added to the register of Ranma Saotome as a slave. The doctor had been assigned to "light duty" and suspended her license until she was completely healed - and working for a student of the martial arts certainly could fit that category.
The clerk also noted that someone down the chain was notifying the woman's daughter of her mother's whereabouts. While strongly frowned upon in general society, it was also quite understandable. So he shrugged and continued on, not seeing the harm in it.
There was a further detail to take care of, and the clerk debated its doing. The former Master's assets had been seized and heavily fined, and part of the share went into the account of those he had wronged - in this case the slave that had been abused.
The clerk clucked to himself thoughtfully. The courts were paying for Kumori's convalescence until her sale went through, but he could delay the final stage in the paperwork until Saotome-san arrived. The thought running through his head was that if he threw the money into a contract buy-out, it would shorten her enslavement but could cause legal repercussions. If her old Master used it to have his case overturned, that would be bad. So that option was out. There were other ways it could be used to good benefit, and the clerk had a lot of contacts to get him the best possible deal (his reputation as one of the best gossips in the area having its perks) and a few services that were not entirely legal in themselves.
It was the older woman's happiness that concerned the clerk. She'd gotten a pretty raw deal through no fault of her own, and now she was looking at a period as common labor until she could get back to doctoring. The young master would be saving some money as she was being purchased as Labor, but would eventually be reinstated as a physician. So what to do? She didn't have much in the way of possessions.
The clerk sat down and made a notation. The young master would be arriving soon according to the word through the grapevine. He had just enough time to:
Read the comments on this episode
(Posted Tue, 31 Aug 2004 10:09)
Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
Send a mail to addventure@bast-enterprises.de
or use the contact form.
らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
All other series and their characters are © by their respective creators or owners. No claims of ownership of these characters are implied by the authors of this Addventure, or should be inferred.
The Anime Addventure is a non-profit site.