Sometime later Danya was lifted off the horse and momentarily handed over to Hamish, but after a few moments of weak, half-awake objections he found himself pressed back against Simon’s chest.

“Stopping for the night,” Simon explained, his voice a gruff murmur. 

They were sitting on the ground. Behind them, a half collapsed structure loomed in the darkness and blocked the wind. Danya drifted back to sleep to the quiet sounds of Hamish setting up their camp.

The next time Danya woke up, it was light out and Simon was trying to gently shift Danya off of him. Danya made a sound of objection and clung tighter.

Simon sighed — not angry, just tired. “Come on, Danya. I need to pee.”

Every instinct Danya had was telling him not to let go, but after a few seconds of resistance he woke up enough to remember his training. Reluctantly, he released Simon.

Danya felt… well, awful. Absolutely rotten. But also not as bad as he probably ought to have, considering everything. He was still sore and low on energy, but he was in balance. It was an ordered and manageable exhaustion.

They’d set up their little camp behind an old, mostly collapsed barn in a field and let the horses loose to graze.

Hamish sat a short distance away, blinking sleepily in the dawn light. When he caught Danya watching him, he gave him a tight smile. It was hard to tell if he was cross or just tired.

Simon came back from relieving himself on the barn and let Danya rest his head on his lap. He was silent for so long that Danya was starting to drift back to sleep before he finally spoke. “So. I think we should talk.”

Danya pressed his face against Simon’s thigh. He didn’t want to talk, preferably ever. He just wanted to pretend that he’d done nothing wrong and everything would be fine.

Simon took hold of Danya’s hand and gently tugged his sleeve down, revealing the mess he’d made of his wrist. “Starting with this, I think.”

The best thing Danya could do right now was be cooperative and obedient, but his throat had closed up and all he wanted to do was hide. There was no way out of this situation that he could see. He had been caught doing something very wrong, and he treasured every second he could spend delaying the consequences.

“Danya,” Simon said, his tone a gentle warning. “Talk to me. Why did you try to kill yourself?”

For a moment, Danya’s breathing stopped. Did he really think…? Could Danya pass this off as something other than what it was? Something slightly more forgivable? Attempting to kill himself would have been a terrible transgression against his master, but at least it didn’t carry fatal legally guaranteed consequences.

Then his eyes met Hamish’s, and he knew there was no chance. Hamish knew the truth.

“His tracking chip’s in that wrist, Simon.”

There was a moment of silence from Simon, and then, “Ah.”

“It’s implanted in the bone, though. I’m guessing he didn’t know that.”

Danya shrunk in on himself further. He had not known that. He had been sedated when they had put it in before he left the nursery for Milaine House. He’d never even stood a chance of escaping.

“Okay, so that’s not quite what I thought had happened, but the question still stands,” Simon said. “Why?”

Danya wanted to cry. What could he even say? It had always been stupid and hopeless and desperate.

“I know I wasn’t very nice to you,” Simon persisted, “but what were you even going to do? Where was there for you to go?”

“I knew I was going to die, sir,” Danya said, his voice so quiet it was barely more than a whisper. He was surprised Simon hadn’t pushed him away yet. “I just wanted to be the one to make the choice.”

“So it was a suicide attempt, in the end. Do you want to die?”

“No!” Danya pushed himself up so that he could look at Simon, but immediately dropped his gaze. He didn’t want Simon to think that he wanted this. “If I’m going to die, I’d rather die doing something than be quietly euthanized. I know that’s bad. It’s not how I’m supposed to be. But... can’t you at least understand it?”

“Yes,” Simon said with such sincerity that now Danya really was crying. “But I never said I was going to do that.”

Danya sniffed and angrily rubbed the moisture away from his eyes. “Not to me, but I heard the two of you talking last night. About how you were going to deal with me after we were done with the dinner. I know what that means.”

“Well the funny thing is you don’t, because that isn’t what I meant.”

“Yeah,” Hamish interjected. “We just meant like, we were gonna deal with one thing at a time. With you in the picture we’ll have to rethink our approach to a few things. That’s all.”

Danya wrapped his arms around his chest and his head dropped forward. What had he done? He would have been fine, but he’d made a hasty assumption and done something that they were obligated to hand him in for. A good slave wouldn’t have had a problem, but Danya was not a good slave. He had never been a good slave. At least he would deserve this. He was shaking.

“He’s still not going to have you euthanized, you know,” Hamish said.

“Seriously? Is that what’s wrong? Stop it. Stop thinking that.”

Danya’s voice shook as he spoke. “But legally, you—”

“I don’t give a shit.”

Danya looked between Simon and Hamish, confused. He’d attempted to run away. Punishment wasn’t optional. He needed to be made an example of.

“We should just tell him,” Hamish said. “At this point, I think it’ll cause less problems if we’re all on the same page. Besides, he’s clearly not the type to throw away self preservation for the sake of following rules.”

“You could also say he’s not the type to make sensible, carefully considered decisions.” Simon sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Sorry. That wasn’t fair. You’re right.”

“We’re not really all that on board with slavery being a thing,” Hamish explained. “I mean, owning another person and being allowed to do anything you want to them is pretty fucked up, right?”

He looked like he expected a response, so Danya shrugged. What could he say? As much as he resented his own circumstances at times and as sick as it made him to think about some of the things he had witnessed, this system had been all he’d ever known. He had never truly questioned it.

“You thought I was going to have you killed just because you were an inconvenience,” Simon reminded him. “You seemed to think that was pretty unfair.”

Danya wanted to cry again and he didn’t really know why. This was… better? Yes, much better. Obviously. He just didn’t know what to do with it.

“And people do way worse things to slaves than that,” Hamish added. “Like… really fucked up things.”

“I know,” Danya said so quietly it was barely audible. He wanted to cuddle back up to Simon, but he was more uncertain of where they stood with one another than ever.

“I realise this is a lot to take in all at once,” Simon said. “All I need from you for now is a promise that you won’t tell anybody about this. That wouldn’t end well for any of us, including you.”

“Of course not, sir,” Danya said, wide-eyed. “I know my behaviour has been, ah — erratic — but I promise that you have my loyalty. I will not let you down again, sir.”

“I don’t think you…” Simon made a face, shook his head, and sighed. “Enough with the ‘sir’ thing, okay? Save it for when we’re in public.”

“Sorry.”

“Or when you want to annoy him by using it sarcastically,” Hamish added. “He loves that.”

Danya offered him a meek smile. “I’ll remember that, sir.”

Hamish grinned. “That’s my boy.”

“Anyway,” Simon said pointedly. “Slavery. We’re… not so fond.”

Hamish made a quiet sound in the back of his throat, like that was an understatement.

“I’ve always found the whole thing a bit uncomfortable, I suppose, but it wasn’t until I joined the military that I realised the things that went on were much worse than simply using people for unpaid labour,” Simon continued. “So now that I have the opportunity to lead my own unit, I’m trying to put together a group of people who see the issue the same way I do.”

“Which is hard as fuck when openly expressing those kinds of ideas is treason,” Hamish added. 

Simon inclined his head in agreement. “We were going to say that nobody in the unit was allowed to have slaves with them for practical purposes to explain why it might look like we’re selecting against slave owners. Now that I have you, that doesn’t really work anymore. That was the problem we were discussing.”

“Which is just a dumb logistical thing, really,” Hamish said. “I think I figured out a way to make things work, anyway. Simon, do you know Liam Roy?”

“Yes…” Simon said cautiously.

“He has a slave. If we bring him on board, it won’t look like we’re selecting against slave owners.”

“I’m not sure he and I would see eye to eye on things.”

“I’ve heard some things. I’ll look into it,” Hamish said.

“Fine. Anyway, Danya, I think it’s time we heard the full story of what happened with this vampire.”

Danya winced. He had been hoping they had forgotten about that, as unlikely as that seemed. He took a steadying breath and started in on the story.

He told them what had happened, including some parts that he perhaps oughtn’t have — that he was able to feel the vampire with his mind and that the magelight he’d used to weaken her had been a bit more powerful than an average Companion could have managed. They didn’t seem to think anything of either of those things. He got the impression that they weren’t particularly familiar with the rules around Companion classification, nor how strict they were.

“If you need to write a report about what happened, it might be better if, ah — well, if you don’t mind lying—”

Simon raised his eyebrows in question.

“Sir — Simon — I took your knife from you and used it to kill. It won’t matter that the thing I killed was a vampire or that doing so likely saved all of our lives. It would perhaps be better if you told people that you woke up as the vampire was attacking me and managed to surprise it.”

“You deserve the credit for such a damn fine kill, but,” Simon shrugged, “you’re right that nobody else is likely to appreciate it. Still... I want you to know that we do. You did save our lives. We owe you for that.”

“Yeah, kid. We’ll happily lie our asses off to keep you safe, but it sucks that we have to,” Hamish added. “Anyone else would get a medal for pulling off what you did.”

“Oh, fuck, I hope they don’t try to give me a medal for this.” Simon made a face. “I’ll have to work on making it sound as unimpressive as possible.”

“I mean, we did both manage to let ourselves get drugged, so I don’t there there’s much risk of anybody being too wildly impressed.”

“I can’t argue with that. The completely honest version of this story is so shameful that I should be glad I won’t have to tell it to anyone who has the power to demote me. I thought I had not trusting people down to an art, but here we are.”

Hamish gave him a pat on the shoulder. “Sometimes a weird mayor drugs you and tries to feed you to a vampire and there’s just nothing you can do about it.”

“Joining the military was a mistake.”

“Well, at least it was your own stupid decision,” Hamish said with a significant look in Danya’s direction.

“Hmm.” Simon’s gaze swept over Danya and his frown deepened. “You’re a mess.”

Danya made a face and tried to brush some dirt off of his robe, but there was no salvaging it. He was indeed a mess. “Sorry. Normally I would use magic, but…”

“Well, fortunately us humans have invented our own primitive ways to clean ourselves. Come here.”

As Danya crawled over to sit in front of him, Simon got a clean rag out of his bag and dampened it with water from his canteen. He tilted Danya’s chin up with a gentle tap of one calloused finger and then began carefully dabbing away the blood that had dried all over Danya’s neck.

Danya was grateful for his robe. Sitting with his knees up, it was easy to hide exactly what kind of effect Simon’s touch was having on him. Danya inhaled sharply as Simon’s finger brushed his jaw and Simon murmured an apology, thinking he’d hurt him.

Hamish caught Danya’s eye and gave him a knowing grin as he packed up the camp. He wasn’t fooled.

The mood sobered as Simon moved on to Danya’s wrist. He spent a moment just holding Danya’s arm, examining the cuts. “Suicide may not have been your intent, but doing this — you could have killed yourself, you know?”

Danya dipped his head and didn’t respond. He did know. He hadn’t thought it mattered much at the time.

Simon sighed and started wiping the blood off. “Anyway, you’ll need to keep this bandaged until it heals. Just about anyone in a military camp could tell at a glance that a vampire didn’t do this.”

“And if anyone does see it, just pretend it’s part of some weird fetish Simon has,” Hamish cut in. “Because somehow that’s fine.”

“Oh, brilliant. My reputation will be in tatters, but that’ll probably be a good thing because at least nobody will suspect I have any sympathy for slaves. Which would, of course, be unforgivable.”

“I’ll be careful,” Danya murmured as Simon started bandaging his wrist.

“Good.” Simon pinned the end of the bandage in place. “We’d best get going, then. The direction we’re headed in is much safer, but I’d like to avoid another night under the stars all the same. You never really know what might be out there.”

“Pfft,” Hamish said as he led Simon’s horse over. “I joined the military hoping to find out, and so far the answer’s been vampires and jack shit. Boring.”

“Oh, shut up. You already told him why you really joined the military.”

“I can have more than one motivation for doing something! I’m a complex person, Simon.”

“No you’re not.”

Hamish shook his head. “You’re so hurtful, Simon.”

“Anyway,” Simon said as he pushed himself to his feet, “there’s a reason we stick to well travelled paths. All that, out there…” he gazed towards the mountains, away from the road, “that belongs to the fae. I don’t really know what that means and I don’t think I want to find out.”

“Because you’re boring,” Hamish said as he handed the reins over. “We’re probably going to die young one way or another. Sounds like a fun way to go.”

“I’d rather die doing something that actually matters.”

Hamish let out a bark of laughter. “Well, you let me know when you find something like that.”

“I—” Danya’s throat closed up when both pairs of eyes were suddenly on him. He swallowed and made himself keep going. “I would rather not die.”

Simon gave him a kind smile. “Then I suppose I shall have to live too. Hamish, help me get him up on the horse.”