The mighty 4!
My honourable friends,
our fourth prompt post!
That's right, number FOUR.
Like the nucleobases, the fundamental forces of physics and the horsemen of the apocalypse.
Like the number of seasons, the number of letters in most swear words and the number of boxes each tetris shape is made of.
In this spirit, here are four things to keep in mind:
1) The ( Read more... )
our fourth prompt post!
That's right, number FOUR.
Like the nucleobases, the fundamental forces of physics and the horsemen of the apocalypse.
Like the number of seasons, the number of letters in most swear words and the number of boxes each tetris shape is made of.
In this spirit, here are four things to keep in mind:
1) The ( Read more... )
Charles Kennedy’s Scottish tones were level, controlled - and pure ice. His pale blue eyes were glacial and his usual air of friendly geniality had completely disappeared. That more than anything told Cameron just how furious his opposite number in the Liberals truly was. Kennedy loathed what he called ‘over-emotional ego trips’ and very rarely indulged in the emotional fireworks so beloved of certain Labour politicians. His temper, though, was just as fiery as his red hair suggested, so when he did let rip, it tended to be spectacular.
“The Coalition agreement doesn’t prevent us walking if we feel that our position has been compromised,” he continued, “And we will walk, Cameron, have no doubt of that!”
“We’d have no choice, really,” added the tall, dark James Lundie in the reasonable tones of the master negotiator he was. “Even if we were willing to accept this -”
“-which we are not!” snapped Kennedy, and the other MP in the Liberal delegation, quiet, unobtrusive, fiercely intelligent David Laws, nodded his blond head in instant support.
“- which we most definitely are not, the rest of the party would rebel. Immediately. And you would lose your mandate to govern, and off we’d go on another election campaign, which we all know the country cannot afford.”
David Laws’ quiet tones were a vivid contrast to the anger of his leader, but his voice was just as rigidly determined.
“You have to free him, Prime Minister. You absolutely have to. We cannot be seen to be propping up a government which supports and encourages the slave trade! Your manifesto explicitly states that the Tories are neutral on this issue - and you’ve said that you personally want to see the trade ended! If that’s the case, how can you possibly accept the Slavers’ Gift? Labour will take you to the cleaners, and rightfully so!”
“I completely understand the problem,” Dave said sincerely, running a hand helplessly through his carefully-coiffured locks to leave them in hopeless disarray while he radiated a calculated air of indecision and bewilderment. “It’s my dilemma as well as yours, as you’ve just pointed out.”
There were five of them in the big, spacious office which Cameron had inherited from the outgoing incumbent Tony Blair only hours before. The two Liberal MPs and their special adviser James Lundie, all members of the negotiating team which had hammered out the Coalition agreement - the two MPs were also members-to-be of Cameron’s new Cabinet - were sitting on one sofa, while on the other side of the coffee table another sofa held Cameron himself, a very quiet and watchful George Osborne and Andy Coulson. Neither of the Tories had contributed much to the conversation so far, but then, this was one of the few situations that no-one at Conservative Central Office had foreseen.
Andy’s gaze flickered briefly sideways and Dave picked up on the signal immediately.
“Andy, go and see if you can rustle up some coffee and sandwiches, will you? I think this might turn into rather a long session.” he said, carefully casual.
Coulson nodded and got up, then tilted his head at Lundie.
“Want to come with me, James?” he suggested. “We’re not going to be needed until they’re putting together the press release, and I could do with some help finding the property deeds for the slave. We daren’t leave them to be found by some No 10 flunky who might leak them before we’re ready!”
Lundie looked towards David Laws, who nodded at the tall, handsome Liberal activist whom he had married around two years previously, if Dave recalled correctly.
“That’s a good idea, James. We need to keep this to as small a circle as we can, for now. I’ll text you.”
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“As I said, gentlemen, I do understand your dilemma,” Dave returned to the earlier conversation, “But really, isn’t this all a bit academic for the moment? It’s not as if immediate manumission is achievable. Can’t we come up with a form of words -”
“What do you mean, ‘not achievable?”
Dave blinked in (slightly overplayed) surprise. “Why, didn’t you know? I’m afraid the Slavers’ Guild have been rather too generous this time. Perhaps they wished to show their delight at the return of a Conservative government, I don’t know, but - well,”
He allowed his words to trail off into calculated silence, and both Kennedy and Laws stiffened, suddenly wary.
“What?” - “Come on, Cameron - spit it out!” came the simultaneous demands, and Dave shrugged, maintaining his easy, slightly regretful façade.
“The Slavers’ Gift is a bed slave,” he said simply. “You know as well as I do that they can’t just be thrown out on the street without some de-conditioning first - not without a serious risk of mental breakdown.”
He briefly considered adding a comment about endangering a man’s sanity purely on a principle, then abandoned it. The Liberals weren’t stupid - there was no need to rub it in.
Laws’ face tightened, and Kennedy bit his lip. “Bastards,” he muttered, the Scottish accent lending a touch of musicality to his words. "Conditioning human beings - training them like animals…”
His voice trailed into silence and he lowered his gaze to stare at the faded, antique carpet under their feet, pulling at his ear as he considered Dave’s words.
“Where is he now, this bed slave?” enquired Laws. “Since he’s the subject of our discussion, I really think he should be here.”
“Gabby took him down to the kitchens for something to eat,” returned Dave. “The poor chap was delivered here early this morning, long before I was called to the palace to see the King, and he’d been left in here -” he gestured vaguely at the office around them, “- nearly all day without any food or water. It was disgraceful, I wouldn’t treat a dog like that, let alone a human being!”
The obvious anger in his voice caught him as much by surprise as it did his listeners, and he cleared his throat in embarrassment, feeling his face heat. Well, it was true, he thought rebelliously. Poor Nick had obviously been suffering from both hunger and thirst when Dave had seen him. It was appalling treatment, and he had already let the staff of No. 10 - who still numbered a few slaves among their number, although HM Government had been quietly divesting itself of its slave stock over the past few years - know of his displeasure.
“Hmf. Glad to see you feel as you ought over some matters, anyway,” muttered Kennedy. He shot Dave a distinctly mistrustful glare, but Laws leaned over and murmured something in the older man’s ear and slowly he relaxed his hostility, to lean back on the sofa with a curt, choppy nod. Laws looked across at the watching Tories.
“Please could you find out if he’s eaten?” he requested, “And if he has, perhaps you would be so good as to have him brought back here, so we can speak to him?... I really think that we should find out what he wants, don’t you?”
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“- George!”
Dave’s sharp voice sliced across Osborne’s just too late to prevent his audience realising what he was intending to say. The Liberals immediately exploded into furious denunciations of Osborne’s ‘bigotry and ignorance’, as Laws described it. Well, Laws should know, reflected Dave as he tried to pour oil on the troubled waters. Everyone knew that the new Secretary to the Treasury had been born slave and manumitted in his teens.
But even Laws hadn’t been trained as a bed slave!
“I suggest we take a quick break,” Dave said authoritatively. “Let’s have a five minute time-out, shall we? And George, could you ask Gabby to bring in Ni - the Slavers’ Gift,” he corrected hastily.
Osborne went to obey, frowning a little, and Dave sighed - silently. There were times… George was one of his closest friends and a brilliant political strategist, but he could be very high maintenance. Some of his attitudes were straight out of the 1922 Committee’s handbook even though most of the time he was even more reformist than Cameron. His views on slavery and the slave trade were a case in point.
A heavy, strained silence fell as the three men still in the large, elegantly-appointed office wandered around, stared vaguely out of the window or studied the bookshelves and paintings, Cameron tactfully ignoring the two Liberals while Laws worked on helping Kennedy wrestle his temper back under control.
It seemed longer, but Dave knew from his watch that it was less than five minutes later when the door opened and Andy Coulson ushered Nick through it. Moving with that fluid, easy deportment which was the mark of a trained bed slave, Nick looked around, hesitating briefly at the sight of two strangers, but then he saw Cameron and made his way over to his master.
There he dropped to his knees and bowed his head.
“Thank you for permitting me food, master.”
Dave shifted, very conscious of two derisive Liberal stares from the other side of the room and suddenly uncomfortable with having a slave kneeling at his feet… Ridiculous. It wasn’t as if he’d never been in this situation before! What was wrong with him!
“Oh, for - stand up immediately!” he snapped. “I don’t wish you to kneel to me in future - clear?”
Nick had scrambled to his feet at Dave’s words, losing some of that trained grace and smoothness in his haste to obey, and now he flinched away, bobbing his head in hurried, frightened acquiescence.
“Y-yes, master. I’m sorry, master.”
“Cameron.”
It was Laws’ voice. Even across the room Dave could sense his anger. “Do you always vent your bad temper on those who can’t retaliate?”
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“Nick,” he said quietly, “Look at me.”
Nick was standing with his hands loosely clasped in front of him. Cameron saw the knuckles, briefly, whiten as Nick’s hands tightened, the thin-fleshed shoulders stiffening and teeth sinking into the bottom lip in an agony of tension - then the deferentially-bowed head lifted and for the first time those changeable, scared eyes met his.
Several things happened at once.
Somewhere deep within Dave he felt something click into place. Something... fit.
At the same time there was a change behind the blue-grey of Nick’s eyes. At the precise moment that Dave registered that odd sensation, that spark of warmth - life - something filling that emptiness that had ached within him for so long, he saw - a difference. A… deepening, or softening…
And simultaneously with both those events - or were they one linked event, happening to two people? - he heard David Laws suddenly shout,
“No, Cameron, don’t - ah, shit!”
Sheer incredulity at hearing the very quiet, very proper David Laws using such improper language broke through Cameron’s sudden, odd fascination with his new slave, and he looked round. Laws was dropping his hand to his side, his expression an odd mixture of annoyance and resignation, and he shook his head as Cameron looked at him.
“Well, that’s that then,” the small man said, and shrugged at his colleague, who seemed to be as bewildered as Dave.
“What was all that about?” demanded Kennedy. Laws’ mouth quirked into his characteristic one-sided, oddly charming grin.
“The Slavers Guild have managed to get one over on all of us, Charlie. There’s nothing we can do about it now.”
He looked at Nick, his eyes sympathetic. “Nick, is that your name?”
The slave nodded warily, and Laws smiled reassuringly. “It’s all right, Nick, I know - we all know,” he gestured at the rest of the occupants of the PM’s office, “That you’re not to blame for what the Guild’s done.
“They Keyed you, didn’t they?”
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And your Liberals. Three of my favourite. *waits for more*
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