“I’ll buy them from you,” she said desperately. Though she hated to put any money into the cruel Mistress’s pocket, she couldn’t see the poor males sent to their deaths.
“You’ll what?” Mistress Crueltongue raised one razor sharp eyebrow delicately.
“I said I’ll buy them—all of them. Whatever you paid, I’ll double it—triple it even,” Lexi said recklessly. She had the money now to do what she liked—though what she was going to do with five abused male bodyslaves, she had no idea.
Mistress Crueltongue looked down her nose at Lexi.
“You couldn’t afford them. If you had the credit to pay triple what a bodyslave—even an old, broken-down one—is worth, you’d be wearing much better clothing.”
At that moment, the Estate Agent came rushing across the street in tiny, mincing steps due to the height of her heels.
“Oh, Mistress Alexa,” she gasped, coming to a teetering halt in front of Lexi. “You ran away before I could give you the keys and codes to your new building!”
“New building?” Mistress Crueltongue demanded, frowning. “Which building are you speaking of?”
“That one—across the street—Trindall Tower.” Lexi pointed to the towering skyscraper which took up most of the city block across from them. “I just inherited it from my Great Aunt.”
“Oh, are you the one old Mistress Granipants chose as her heir?” Mistress Crueltongue looked down her nose at Lexi and sniffed. “Well, people did say she was going senile before she died. Now I see the rumors were all true.”
“Mistress Alexa is now the owner of Mistress Granipants’ building and all her worldly assets,” the Estate Agent told her. “She comes from Zetta Prime,” she added and gave the other Mistress an expressive look. “That’s why she, er, doesn’t exactly have on the latest fashion.”
“Oh, a Zettite—that explains everything,” Mistress Crueltongue said dismissively. “They’re all such prudes—so afraid to show any skin. And they refuse to take bodyslaves too, when everyone knows it’s the only proper use for a male.”
“Yes, we Zettites refuse to be cruel and barbaric and parade around half naked while we torture poor, helpless males. And if that’s offensive to you, I don’t give a damn,” Lexi snapped at her. “But now you know I can more than afford to buy those bodyslaves from you. So name your price.”
“I see.” Mistress Crueltongue gave her a considering look, as though she was actually contemplating selling the abused pack of males. “And pray tell me—what would you do with them if you bought them from me?”
“Set them free, of course,” Lexi said promptly. “They deserve to live their lives the same way we do. All the Goddess’s creatures deserve that.”
“Hmm…I see,” Mistress Crueltongue murmured again. “Most interesting.”
“So what’s your price?” Lexi demanded.
The other Mistress’s crimson lips had curved into a cruel smile.
“I’m afraid they’re not for sale—at any price,” she said sweetly. “I need them for my mines and I’m not about to give up perfectly good workers just so a goody-goody like yourself can feel superior. Good day.”
And with a final smirk, she’d poked the pack of hapless males into action with her pain prod and continued down the street, leaving Lexi fuming and helpless.
THREE
Lexi still got mad when she remembered that first encounter with Mistress Crueltongue. She’d felt terrible that she hadn’t been able to save the poor males the other woman had been abusing. But the incident had made her decide against selling everything and going home to Zetta Prime. Instead, she was going to stay and keep the awful Yonnite Mistress from sending a more males to her Death Mines. It was her new mission in life, she decided—one she was determined to succeed at.
And so, she had made it her business to find out where the Down Market slave district was located and began to frequent the lowly place every Market Day. She went to every slave market that dealt in downtrodden males who were on their last legs—the ones who’d already seen years of backbreaking service or had their nerves shot from overuse of the pain collar or were sick or too old to be much good anywhere else.
She found the very males that Mistress Crueltongue would have bought for her mines and Lexi bought them instead. She didn’t get them all—she couldn’t be everywhere at once. But she did her level best to put a big dent in the pool of available slaves at the bargain markets.
Of course, once she had the used bodyslaves, she had to do something with them. Using some of her inheritance money, she’d set up a small clinic on one of the moons orbiting Zetta Prime—a place where males were welcome—and paid to rehabilitate the broken-down bodyslaves and get them back on their feet. When they were able, they were free to leave and do whatever they liked—Lexi had set up a job and housing program for them and a number of them were doing quite well now.
None of this was cheap, but she had almost unlimited resources and she was damned if she’d let that horrible Mistress Crueltongue keep on murdering people, Lexi told herself.
Still, as satisfying as the work was, she found herself missing her cozy little bakery. It had been months now since she’d left Zetta Prime and though she kept in touch with her assistant Grettah and knew that everything was being run well in her absence, Lexi missed the smell of baking bread and the feeling of dough under her fingers.
If only I could find a way to shut that horrible bitch down forever, I could go home, she thought longingly, as she picked her way along the dirty street, towards the biggest slave market. She was tired of living here in this big, ugly city filled with narcissistic sadists like Mistress Crueltongue—which most of the Yonnite Mistresses seemed to be.
Of course, the obvious solution was to simply shut down the Diluthian mines, but though Lexi had made roundabout bids through a third-party agent in an effort to acquire the “Death Mines” as they were called, Mistress Crueltongue had steadfastly refused any and all offers. Apparently the mines had been in her family for generations, handed down from mother to daughter, and she wasn’t about to let them go, no matter how much money she was offered.
Lexi’s next thought had been to go to the Sacred Seven and try to get some legislation passed to protect the hapless bodyslaves. If she could make it illegal to use them as labor in the mines, that would be almost as good as shutting the mines down. After all, there were mining robots that could do the work easily—but they cost a lot to buy and maintain and Mistress Crueltongue wasn’t going to use them unless she was forced to. She much preferred the cheap labor she got from the used bodyslaves.
But though her Great Aunt Granipants had apparently had the “Ear of the Council” and she had heard the new Sacred Seven who had recently been elected were very fair minded, Lexi was finding it impossible to get an audience with them at all. They always seemed to be too busy to consider her legislation or even to meet and speak with her, even though she was now richer than the Goddess herself.
Lexi thought this probably had something to do with the fact that she refused to dress like the Yonnite Mistresses or own a bodyslave like they did. But she didn’t feel like she ought to have to parade around half-naked and subjugate some poor male in order to effect meaningful legislation! It was incredibly frustrating.