“Prime Minister, this way” – “Mr Cameron, how do you feel - ” – “Just one more, Prime Minister!”
The big black door swung shut on the flashing cameras and hubbub of reporters and David Cameron dropped his hand and his affable ‘Meet the public’ smile with a sigh of relief, only to break into a much more relaxed grin as the group of people gathered in the foyer of No. 10 Downing St. burst into spontaneous applause.
As he began to work his way towards the stairs the clustered aides and staff continued to congratulate him, the bravest clapping him on the shoulder, the rest offering a more restrained handshake or a nod and a smile, and he acknowledged them all with careful courtesy, noting names and faces for future reference and pushing his relief and sheer, disbelieving delight to the back of his mind. He was Prime Minister! He’d made it – with a little help from a rival party, admittedly, but he’d closed the deal. He was the one who’d made it work, he’d persuaded his party that they could work with the Liberal Democrats -
“Dave.”
Andy Coulson’s quiet voice was pitched to reach his ears only, and Dave turned to face his press chief, a thrill of apprehension suddenly dampening his euphoria.
“We have a problem.”
Coulson raised his voice a little for the benefit of those still within earshot.
“Allow me to show you to your main office, Prime Minister. There are many messages and of course gifts for you to see, and Steve Hilton asked me to inform you that the President of the Confederate States of America will be telephoning to congratulate you very shortly.”
As the crowd fell back Coulson ushered Cameron up the stairs towards the suite of rooms which included the Prime Minister’s Office, waving away the aides who occasionally tried to approach them.
“What’s this problem?” muttered Dave, carefully quiet.
Moving ahead of him to open the door, Coulson said grimly, “You’ll see.”
He gestured at the outer office, where two junior Conservative aides were opening piles of envelopes and sorting the contents – cards and messages of congratulations and goodwill – into stacks ready for answering. Piled by the table, ready for unwrapping later, were glittering, lavishly-wrapped parcels and bundles, as well as the odd bouquet of flowers, and Cameron shook his head in disbelief at it all. He’d always been vaguely aware of the old tradition of gifting a brand new Prime Minister with a small token of esteem, but he’d had no idea that so many guilds and businesses followed the custom – nor that such gifts could be so extravagant. Given the parlous state of the country’s finances, he couldn’t help wondering where all these organisations, businesses and trade guilds had found the funds.
“Good heavens, it looks like a wedding reception in here!”
“Well, the PM is supposed to be married to the country. Perhaps it’s just as well you’re single, or there’d be twice as many,” Coulson pointed out, his gaze skipping over the richly-wrapped boxes. “That’s not what I wanted you to see, though. In here -”
He gestured at the door to the inner sanctum of the PM’s private office, adding to the nearest aide, “Where did you put him? In there?”
The man nodded. “I thought it best, sir,” he said. “Pending a decision on what to do with him.”
Him? thought Dave. What the devil –
Then Andy opened the door and waved him through into the cosy, comfortable room beyond, and he understood.
Kneeling in front of the empty desk, hands resting correctly on thighs and neat red-brown head bowed, was a man dressed in the thin trousers and short-sleeved shirt that was the standard livery for a slave.
And not just any slave, either, Dave realized through his slow-growing anger, recognising the colourful design tattooed on the left forearm – a bed slave.
Someone had gifted the Prime Minister with a bed slave.
“Who the hell’s sent me this?” he exploded, seeing with part of his mind how the slave hunched a little lower at the anger in his voice but unable to moderate his tones.
“The Slavers’ Guild, of course,” Coulson shot back, closing the door carefully behind him. “The new PM is always gifted with a slave after an election! Didn’t you know?”
“Yes, but it’s usually a cook or a valet, something like that. Not a – not a whore!” snapped Cameron. He glared at the motionless figure in front of him and thought he saw a minute tremor run through the thin body.
Stop it, Dave , the voice of his conscience told him. The poor bugger’s terrified – look at him. It’s hardly his fault, you mustn’t take it out on him -
But he stayed furious, with himself as much as anything. How could he have forgotten the Slavers’ Gift? Politically this could be disastrous for the new Coalition. Cameron led the party which supported the old traditions and the old ways, yes, but as PM he was now allied with the party which had made the abolition of slavery the central tenet of their policies for at least the last forty years, if not longer…
“Manumit him,” he decided abruptly. “That’s what Blair did with his Slavers’ Gift, and Smith before him.”
Coulson snorted.
“I only wish you could. But you’re a Tory, Dave, remember? The Slavers’ Guild is one of the party’s biggest donors – you can’t afford to piss them off! Besides, this is a bed slave. You can’t just manumit a bed slave like you can a nanny or a driver!”
No. Of course you couldn’t. Bed slaves were carefully trained and conditioned over many months, sometimes years, to service their users, and it took months to de-condition them. It was why they were so rare, and so expensive…
Which wasn’t to say that it couldn’t be done.
“If I keep him,” the Prime Minister pointed out, “The Liberals will scream blue murder. And I can’t say I’d blame them either,” he added.
“We’ve just spent nearly a week thrashing out a coalition agreement in which they’ve already had to compromise part of their manifesto. How is the fact that the PM owns a slave – not just any slave, but a bed slave, the most highly-trained and least -” he waved a hand frustratedly around, trying to find a word to fit, “ – least… manumit-able type of slave there is… How is that going to go down with their MPs?
“Or with the country? Not forgetting your mates in the media, they’ll have a ball with this!”
He took a deep breath and let it out, consciously reaching for calm.
“Right, Andy. You’re my chief of communications – time to earn your pay. Call Gabby and Steve and get them in here, as quickly as you can. The Liberals will be here before long and we’ve got to decide what we’re going to do before they arrive. Once we’ve got that far, you can figure out a way to sell it to them.”
Coulson nodded and pulled out his BlackBerry, his eyes already intent as he began to work on the problem even as he texted the two other members of Cameron’s inner circle of advisers. Leaving him to it, Dave decided to learn a little more about his latest acquisition and approached the kneeling slave.
“What’s your name, boy?”
The slave knelt up a little straighter at being addressed.
“Nick, master.”
“Just Nick? Don’t you have a lineage name? And look at me,” Dave added, a little irritably, “It’s incredibly off-putting, trying to talk to a mop of hair.”
The slave raised his head a little but kept his eyes deferentially lowered as was proper. Nevertheless Dave could see that this... Nick possessed an oval face with an unexpectedly stubborn chin, open, youthful features and intelligent - if apprehensive – grey or blue eyes below a floppy, endearingly fluffy fringe of red-brown hair. More hair was visible at the collar of the light cotton shirt whose short sleeves showed the slave’s lean, muscled forearms to advantage, and suddenly Dave found himself thinking that the Slavers’ Guild had certainly done their research. If Cameron had, for some unimaginable reason, ever decided to buy himself a bed slave, these were precisely the looks that he’d have gone for. Even the age was right - close to his own. Christ, this slave could have been deliberately designed to suit one David William Donald Cameron…
Insensibly mollified by the anxiety on Nick’s expressive face, and a little ashamed of the annoyance which had so frightened the other, Dave gestured for him to stand up.
Still watching him sidelong, the fear fading into a slave’s usual wariness, Nick sat back on his heels and came to his feet, staggering a little as stiffened muscles refused to work smoothly. Dave moved back a little, an odd sensation running through him as the other man straightened to his full height. Why, he was tall! Close to Cameron in height, but lightly-built, lean – not a lot of weight to him…
Strong hands, though, Dave noticed, that odd feeling getting stronger, and he found himself swallowing as his mind, purely of its own volition, began presenting him with pictures of what those attractive, blunt-fingered hands would feel like, and what they had been trained to do.
Abruptly he turned away, feeling the heat rise in his face. This was ridiculous! He was 41 years old and the Prime Minister of Great Britain, not some hormone-driven teenager desperate to fuck anything that moved!
“Come on, Andy,” he said abruptly, “How long before Gabby and Steve arrive? Kennedy and Laws – and their aides - are due to arrive in less than an hour!”
Coulson looked up from his BlackBerry and nodded at the door. “Steve’ll be here any minute – Gabby says ten. She’s already suggested one possible approach, and if you like it, I can think of two possible ways to sell it…”
Dave sat down on the big, overstuffed sofa, kicked back, and prepared to listen.
oOo
“I cannot believe that you are seriously intending to keep him! There is no way that my people would stand for it!”
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 comfortable 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.”
Lundie nodded back and sent a quick smile his partner’s way. His handsome, youthful face was transformed by the expression, the closeness that existed between him and Laws clearly to be seen, and Dave fought down a brief, unexpected pang of loneliness at the sight. Stop being such a prat, Dave, he castigated himself. Sam was right to break it off, you know that, even if she was a bit brutal about it! It’s so obvious now that it would never have worked. Even when you were dating you weren’t sure you could truly commit to a relationship with a woman, even if that woman was Sam - and she was always dead set against marrying a politician. She would really have loathed being the Prime Minister’s wife! And you... admit it. You’d have ended up hating her for being female when deep down you always knew you preferred men. So come on – concentrate…
“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 sudden 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?”
George Osborne snorted derisively. “Oh, please! He’s a bed slave, he’s not been trained to think! All he’ll understand is fuck -”
“- 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 left in the 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?”
Dave felt his face burning but refused to look away from Laws’ disapproving gaze. He deserved that, he knew. He’d always prided himself on his self-control and his ability to project relaxed bonhomie, no matter how much strain he was under. To be taking his frustrations out on the powerless was – well, it was, quite simply, wrong. Appalling behaviour – and he’d been annoyed with George’s attitude!
“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 to you.
“They Keyed you, didn’t they?”
Understanding crashed in on Dave and he briefly closed his eyes in silent, furious acknowledgement of the Guild’s cunning and the trap they had caught him in, before opening them just in time to see Nick, biting his lip again, look down at the carpet and nod yes. A quick, choppy jerk of the head which conveyed more clearly than any words the slave’s terror at how his masters might react.
“I, I’m sorry, master, I w-wasn’t permitted to say, I -”
“Keyed! Why you devious, underhand little -”
Andy had been a silent spectator to their little scene and obviously understood the consequences just as quickly as Cameron and Laws. His round, bespectacled face congested with rage, Coulson was striding across from his post by the door before anyone could react, and he got to Nick while everyone else was still struggling to get past their shock at what had just happened.
Once he’d reached his target there was no stopping him. Cameron’s chief of communications grabbed the slave by his shirt, shoved him backwards, and then, in one swift, ferocious move, he sent the back of his hand smashing across Nick’s unprotected face.
Andy was a chunky individual, of barely more than medium height but moderately fit and well-nourished. And, of course, free. Nick, a trained and conditioned bed slave, had no way to either avoid or retaliate, and Coulson’s blow sent him crashing to the ground in a tumble of limbs.
Once there the slave made no attempt to get up. Silent, unresisting, he curled into a huddled ball with one arm up protecting his head – an instinctive, immediate reaction which left Dave feeling a little sick. How many times, how many masters had beaten Nick, for his reaction to be this fast and this automatic…?
Spitting insults and obscenities, the raging Coulson was still going after the cowering slave when Cameron and Kennedy simultaneously caught hold of his arms and hauled him back and away. As he did so Dave saw David Laws crouch down next to Nick and begin to try and coax him out of his terrified protective ball, and as he swung Coulson around to face him Dave felt a totally inappropriate, slightly hysterical bubble of mirth growing inside. It seemed that the Slavers’ Gift was unifying his coalition MPs in ways that the Slavers Guild could never have anticipated!
“All right, Andy, that’s enough!” he snapped.
Face congested with wrath, Coulson drew breath to start on one of his famous tirades and Dave, retaining his hold on his adviser’s arm, shook his head.
“I said no, Andy. Enough!” he repeated firmly. “Nick’s my – I said, that’s enough! Now listen to me! Nick is my slave, if he’s to be punished then it’s up to me to do it! How dare you attack my property! If you ever – ever – do that again…”
Dave took a deep breath, feeling his own anger heating his voice, tensing his muscles, pushing him into attacking Andy the way Andy had gone after Nick, who couldn’t hit back. The bastard. He’d known Coulson had demonstrated a hot temper in the past, but he’d never seen it for himself – and he hadn’t known the man could turn violent. But then, he’d never seen Coulson with slaves or animals before either.
“If you ever go after Nick like that again, you’re out. Out of here, out of Millbank, off my staff altogether for all I care! Do you hear me?”
Coulson’s jaw had dropped, his fury fading in his shock at Cameron’s icy, furious tones. “You’d – you’d do that? Sack me over a fucking slave? But – no, look, Dave, that’s the Keying speaking, you have to fight it -”
“Oh, be quiet!” snapped Dave. “Don’t be so bloody thick, man! Of course it isn’t the Key. I’ve just discovered that one of my closest advisers is a vicious thug… And I’m really, really not happy about that. Just get out, Andy. I don’t want to see you again tonight. Go and sort out the rest of the gifts and put together a Press release about the new Cabinet. I’ll check through it in the morning.
“And not a word to anyone about the Slavers’ Gift!”
Andy’s angry flush had faded, leaving him pale and shocked. He reddened again when Dave called him a thug but made no attempt to argue, listening in silence to the rest of Dave’s speech before nodding curtly and turning to leave. Hesitating briefly on the way out, he glanced sideways at Nick. The slave had been persuaded off the floor and on to a chair, and David Laws had dampened a cloth he’d found somewhere and was gently cleaning the sluggishly-bleeding cut and surrounding bruise on the side of Nick’s jaw.
“You – Nick,” Coulson said suddenly, “I – er, I’m sorry, all right? I know it wasn’t your fault – the Keying.” He shrugged. “Just – we’re all on edge, after all the election shit, and, well - you were there. Sorry…”
The door clicked shut behind him before Nick or Laws could respond, then opened again almost immediately to admit Osborne, carrying a plate of sandwiches and a large pot of coffee.
“Thought I’d make myself useful since Andy was co-opted by Gabby to bring Nick back, and now she’s dashed off to Millbank with Steve,” he said cheerily to Cameron as he put the laden tray down on the coffee table. His ill-temper seemed to have disappeared, Dave was glad to see – but then, George’s spats of temper never lasted very long.
As he straightened Osborne glanced curiously at the chair where Laws was just finishing his careful cleaning of Nick’s bruised features, and gave a soft whistle. “Fuck, that looks nasty! How did that happen?”
“Andy.”
George blinked. “What, Andy as in Andy Coulson? Our obsessive, control freak press man? Wow. What rattled his cage then?”
Taking the mug of coffee George was holding out, Dave was about to answer when Kennedy turned from a brief, low-voiced consultation with his fellow Lib Dem.
“It seems that we’ve all been out-manoeuvred. David says that a Keyed slave cannot be manumitted without a protracted process of de-conditioning first, or he... er...” Kennedy paused, clearly fumbling for the correct terminology.
“..He goes catatonic, and eventually dies,” completed George, his voice brisk and almost absent-minded and most of his attention on selecting a sandwich.
“It’s bad enough freeing an ordinary bed slave without de-conditioning, but at least they just go a bit doolally most of the time. If they go into the sex trade, they might even avoid that. Keyed slaves, though - ” Osborne shook his head.
George understood these things, David knew; the Osborne family had made its fortune in the slave trade. A few generations back, admittedly, but they still had connections with one or two of the bigger firms, and also George knew his family history.
Kennedy’s discomfort dissolved into anger, but George remained oblivious, happily piling sandwiches on to a plate and then hitching himself on to the PM’s desk to sit, legs swinging, and devour his snack. Raising his eyebrows at the Scot when he saw the other’s annoyance, he hastily swallowed his mouthful and said,
“What?”
But the Lib Dem leader shook his head in disgust and turned to Cameron. “As I was saying, Cameron, it seems that you cannot simply free Nick as we requested earlier. Not without killing him. So the Liberals have given you six months.”
“Er - Sorry?”
David Laws joined his leader. “Six months, Cameron. That’s how long it takes to de-condition a Key. We want your personal guarantee that you’ll arrange for that to be done. In six months Nick is to be manumitted, or we will bring down this government. ”
Laws glanced over at the chair where Nick had been sitting, and Dave saw that the slave had dropped back on to his knees on the floor, back into the position he had been in when Dave had first seen him. Bruised face expressionless, his hands resting on his thighs and his head bowed a little, he had somehow become almost invisible – anonymous. Slave. Property, not person...
Laws looked back at Cameron, his eyes dark and angry, and Dave knew that they had both seen the same thing.
“Break the Keying, David.” said Laws quietly. “Free the slaves.”
And with that the Lib Dems left.
oOo
“Phew!” exclaimed Osborne, as the door closed behind the two Liberal MPs. “How do they stand themselves, I wonder? What a load of tree-hugging, sandal-wearing -”
Shaking his head, he returned to his sandwiches, studying Nick’s silent figure as he ate.
“A Keyed bed slave, hmm? That’s expensive. I wonder why they bothered? You haven’t exactly kept your hostility to the slave trade a secret.”
“Politically, I’m neutral ,” Dave protested, and George cocked his head.
“Don’t try selling that line with me, Dave. Everyone knows that the only reason you’ve stayed neutral on slavery is to keep the right-wing loonies like Peter Bone on side. If you could, you’d ban the whole damn trade, you can’t deny it.”
Dave maintained his silence, jamming his hands into his pockets and wandering over to examine the plate of sandwiches on the table. What would George say, he wondered, if he found out about the slave genes in the Cameron family tree? It was odd – everyone seemed to know about his familial connection to William IV, but given that the king had died without producing legitimate issue, just how did anyone imagine that the blood of royalty had come into the Cameron line?
It had arrived illegitimately, of course... via William’s favourite bed slave. All of the king’s fifteen bastards had been born slave, as had their children, and their children after that. It wasn’t until Dave’s reclusive, millionaire banker grandfather had formally married his housekeeper, thereby automatically manumitting her, that his own bloodline had escaped the grasp of the Slavers’ Guild and their breeding programme.
And not only could Dave still remember his formidable grandmother’s stories of life as a slave, of what it had felt like to be property, but he knew that there had to be dozens, maybe more, of step-uncles and aunts, second cousins and half-cousins out there, all with the tattoo proclaiming their unfree status and all carrying almost the same blood and genes as himself. No difference at all, really – except that he was free and they were not...
Oh yes. He hated the Slavers’ Guild and all it stood for, but that didn’t make him some wild-eyed radical. Or a Labour politician. Though it had been a little worrying – and disorientating – over the past few days, discovering how much he seemed to have in common with the Liberal Democrats!
“Dave. Dave!”
“Hm?”
Dave surfaced from his thoughts with a start to see George waving at him.
“Earth calling Dave – are you in there anywhere? What do you want to do with him?”
Dave sighed, looking at the motionless figure by the table. “I don’t know! Find him a bed for the night, I suppose. Maybe in the servants’ quarters...” His voice trailed into silence as he saw George shaking his head.
“No good?”
“No good,” George agreed, then pushed himself off the desk and walked over to Nick’s kneeling figure. “How much do you know about Keying, Dave? Or bed slaves, for that matter?”
Putting his hand under Nick’s chin, he tipped the man’s head up, turning it from side to side so that he could study the slave’s features.
“Hm. Pretty enough under that damage, aren’t you?” he murmured, then glanced over at Dave.
“Well?”
“Only what’s general knowledge. You know my family have only ever employed wage-earners. Why?”
Still keeping a firm hold on Nick’s chin, George tutted and shook his head. “That’s more or less what I was afraid of. All right then – here comes a crash course in owning a bed slave. We’ll talk about the Keying later.
“The first thing you’ve got to remember is that trained bed slaves don’t think. Everything that’s been done to them – the brainwashing, the training, the drugs – all of it is aimed at just one thing. Making sure that when the correct stimulus is applied, they will react instinctively and automatically, without thought and without a hope of self-control.”
Glancing round, he saw that Dave, while following his every word with intent concentration, had that little furrow between his brows which signalled utter confusion. George sighed.
“Looks like you need a demonstration. Right... Nick, hold out your hand.”
Dropping his grip on Nick’s chin, George took the proffered hand, ignoring the slave’s pleading expression – then turned it so that the open palm was facing towards Nick’s master ten feet away.
Then he waited.
For a few seconds nothing seemed to happen. Then as Dave watched, he saw a flush creep across Nick’s features. Nick’s lips parted and his tongue crept out to moisten them; his chest started to rise and fall in longer, deeper breaths and – Dave’s mouth went dry – the light, silky material of his trousers, cut and fitted to leave nothing to the imagination, moved and tightened as Nick’s cock provided unmistakeable evidence of the slave’s aroused state.
“He’s only half-hard at the moment,” George continued clinically. “If he was an ordinary bed slave, I could bring him to the boil simply by rubbing my thumb over the palm of his hand, or the pulse points in his wrist.”
There was a sound suspiciously like a whimper from the man at his side. George ignored it.
“You see, bed slaves have been trained to such a pitch of sensitivity that they can be played like a – like a musical instrument. Best of all, you can keep them that way for hours, so they can service several clients without needing any recovery time. What’s more, they need that level of intensity. Bed slaves have to be used, the harder the better; they’re addicted to the endorphins that sex generates, and they get high on the chemicals the body produces at orgasm. If they’re not used regularly they go into withdrawal. It’s not fatal, but it can cause brain damage.
“But that’s your standard bed slave. Keyed slaves are different.”
Dropping Nick’s hand and patting him carelessly on the head with a murmur of, “Good lad. Stay,” George went to pour himself a drink, leaving Nick to fall forward on to his hands, breathing hard, head down. Patches of sweat were visible on the thin cotton of his shirt and Dave could see that the flush on Nick’s face had spread to his arms. Somehow he knew that if he could see Nick’s eyes, they too would be dark. Huge and blurred with passion, able to see only him –
Biting down hard on his lip and aware of the growing tightness of his own trousers, Dave made himself look at George, who was calmly sipping at a whisky and soda and studying the dazed figure in front of him.
“He really is very responsive in spite of his age. He’s old for a bed slave. That would have made him a bit cheaper, of course. Maybe that’s why they were willing to lose him to Keying. Does seem a bit of a waste, though. ”
“Er – lose him?”
Shaken out of his thoughts by Dave’s question, George glanced round, and hastily Dave brought his hands round to clasp them loosely together in front of his crotch with an embarrassed cough. Luckily Osborne was too engrossed in his explanation to notice.
“Oh, sorry, Dave. I was going to explain Keying, wasn’t I? It’s simple really,” he shrugged. “Keying is – well, it’s person-specific.
“Nick has been Keyed to you, and you alone. All those things I said about ‘playing’ him? You’re the only one who will get that response from him now. And if you don’t use him... Like I said earlier, eventually he’ll go catatonic, and then, sooner or later, he’ll just go -” he snapped his fingers, “- like that.”
He shook his head. “What a waste.”
“You already said that,” snapped Dave angrily. Christ, what a thing to do to someone – anyone!
George grinned. “I did, didn’t I? Well, it’s true. He might be on the old side, but he’s very pretty.”
He cocked his head at his friend. “Maybe I could borrow him for a night now and then?” he suggested tentatively. “I’d be careful not to break him, I promise.”
Dave bit back his heated rejoinder, fighting to keep his deep, instinctive revulsion to himself. To lend a man out as if he was some kind of toy...!
“I thought you said that he was Keyed to me,” he said instead. “If that’s the case it wouldn’t be much good you borrowing him, would it?”
“Oh, you’d be surprised.”
George grinned, stretched and then sat down, cradling his almost-empty glass between his hands while he continued to study Nick.
The slave seemed to have recovered his equilibrium and had returned to his head down, utterly still kneeling position. Dave was sure that Nick was listening, though, and wondered what it must be like, hearing yourself talked about as if you were nothing. A powerless sex toy, unable to resist or avoid anything that your owners might wish to do to you... he shivered. No.
“All it needs is you to order him to my bed,” George was explaining. “And then the Keying extends itself to me, sort of by proxy. It’d be brilliant!”
He sighed dreamily, and Dave somehow kept hold of his temper. “Nick is not something you can borrow for the night, like – like your father’s car!”
George snorted. “Don’t be so wet, Dave. Of course he is. He’s property isn’t he? Only he’d be a lot more fun than Dad’s Morgan! Look – ,” he shifted himself round on the sofa to look earnestly up at his friend, “The thing that’s so special about Keyed slaves is that they’re personalised.”
“I think I’d figured that bit out, thank you very much,” retorted Dave, and George shook his head impatiently.
“No you haven’t! Think about it. Your very own bed slave, trained to match you in every way. Every little fantasy, every kink, Nick will adopt as his own, because he’s Keyed to you. Your shadow. Got a thing about pain? Leather? Water sports? Anything – whatever it is, Nick will have it as well. And if you haven’t got any, if you’re as boringly vanilla as I’ve always guessed you to be...” George shrugged, “Then Nick will be the perfect vanilla partner. About the only thing he can’t do for you is change his sex, but then, if you batted for the home team the Guild would have selected a female to match you.”
“I had no idea the Slavers’ Gift was so carefully researched,” said Dave, hard-voiced. “Unless it’s just this time round. What do you think? Is Nick a bribe, or is the Guild attempting to out-manoeuvre us all, to prevent us - prevent me! - even looking at drawing up anti-slavery legislation?”
“The latter,” decided George, abruptly businesslike. “Finding a bed slave to match your character profile, and then training him up to Key standards... That would have taken some time. It’s not the sort of thing you can do in a week, even with the modern hallucinogenics and behaviour modification techniques. This boy -” he indicated Nick with a wave of his glass “- is the end product of a very long game. How much do you want to bet that tomorrow morning the papers will be full of articles about the generosity of the Slavers’ Guild to the new PM?”
“No bet,” responded Dave. “And no response either. We won’t confirm or deny the news that the PM’s got a Keyed bed slave. It’ll come out eventually, but the longer we can keep it quiet, the easier it’ll be to start on Nick’s de-conditioning.”
Out of the corner of his eye Dave saw a slight movement, and as George was spluttering into his drink Dave looked towards Nick. The slave had lifted his head and was staring with painful intensity at his master, his eyes full of questions - and a tentative, uncertain spark of hope.