Timestamp: 1st of Summer, 518 A.V.
The Kelvic was curled up in the bottom of the old wardrobe sound asleep when the shouting started. It was muffled, coming from Jaren’s main room, though the shouting was loud enough she could hear what was being said even through the workshop door and even through the partially closed doors of the wardrobe. Kelski hadn’t had a real bed to sleep on since Lhavit. The wardrobe, however, was probably one of the most comfortable places she’d found refuge and certainly had beaten the open decks of casinors by a long shot. It was one of the things she longed for, and perhaps if she ever got free would be one of the first things she’d buy for herself.
Jaren’s was comfortable enough. She’d spent serious time in it, not as one of his whores, but chained up by the foot of it or comfortably asleep in the massive space well past where her master slept usually with whatever companion occupied his bed. It had amused Jaren to keep her there, sometimes ordered to watch, sometimes ordered to keep her back turned. He liked being the center of attention, the mainstage of whatever great theater production he was producing in his mind. Kelski often wanted no part of it.
Being owned by Jaren had taught her with hedonism truly was. And while she often lacked the abuse other slaves in the city suffered, being his ‘possession’ was truly one of the worst things in her life.
The deep angry voice coming from Jaren’s room was his father. Jardeg Joander was evidently irritated at Jaren for some reason or another… probably due to his lack of productivity with things he oversaw. Kelski had noted The Barracks, which was Jaren’s last lone duty was in utter disrepair. The building was old, run down, and had all kinds of leaks in it. There was no permanently assigned rooms. The whole building had fallen into a sort of ‘might means right’ in terms of who occupied where.
The strongest most powerful members of Sun's Birth got the biggest rooms, and those rooms tended to be the ones that didn’t miss parts of the roof or had walls blown out. The rest crowded together for warmth and often cannibalized from other parts of the Barracks to shore up their walls and leaking roof. Jaren was supposed to change all that. After he’d been in charge of more important things, like territory, and lost it to rival gangs… Jardeg Joander had put him where he thought Jaren could do no damage with his hedonistic laziness.
The Warmarshal had been wrong.
Even Kelski, a lowly slave, could have told anyone Jaren was pocketing most of Jardeg’s money and then spending it on luxury in his apartment. The items reminded Kelski of a treasure trove or one of those ancient vaults that contained lost pre-Valterrian treasure that people often spoke of in stories. Jaren was driving The Sun Birth’s into poverty and letting their buildings fall into disrepair. She wondered, this time, how Jaren would get out of Jardeg’s wrath or if that was even possible.
The arguing continued for what seemed bells until her door slammed open and Jardeg Joander stood framed in its archway. Kelski poked her head out of the wardrove where she’d given up on sleep, and was then roughly hauled into view as the Warmarshal came over, clamped an iron fist around her thin arm, and pulled her out of her nest at the bottom of the wardrobe.
