“So what’s this guy like?” Lucas asked, as he smoothed wrinkles from his shirt.  “You know, really. The way everyone gets that weird look in their eyes whenever someone mentions his name, he must be a real piece of work.”

“If by, ‘a piece of work’ you mean ‘a challenge to deal with’, “ Victus said, “you are correct.”

Lucas did a double take.  This was the first time he’d heard his trainer say anything remotely negative about anyone.  Even when he pointed out Lucas's failings, which were frequent, he seemed to be treating them as personal challenges rather than his student's failures. Victus could have found something positive to say about spoiled milk, and if he couldn’t find anything nice to say about this guy, he must be a real pain in the ass.

“I see that gleam in your eye, Lucas,” Victus said, seriously.  “Don’t even consider antagonizing him.  And straighten your back."

Lucas stood straight, then rolled his eyes as if offended that Victus would suggest that he might misbehave.  Inside, he was disappointed.  He got a lot of joy out of nettling people who thought their shit didn’t stink, and negins provided particularly fertile grounds for his amusement.  Every one he’d met so far had possessed an inflated opinion of his importance, and this one seemed no different.

“I’m not kidding,” Victus warned.  “He carries your collar’s detonator with him on a chain around his neck, just to remind himself that he could kill you on a whim.”

“He spent way too much money on me,” Lucas said, confidently.  “No way he’s just going to throw that all away.”

“Your contract probably cost him less than his monthly wine bill,” Victus told him, “and every bit of that money gets flushed straight down the toilet in short order.  Trust me on this.  If he thinks your death will provide him amusement, he will not hesitate to blow your head clear of your body.”

The sound of a door unlatching brought silence to the room.  The Negin had requested this short audience with his Protector and the new trainee, just to introduce himself and see what he thought of his new servant. It had been an uncommonly professional thing for the Negin to do, and Victus dared to think that he might be making an impression on the man.   

The Negin walked in, trailing a very young, very sullen looking girl behind him at the end of a long leather leash. The collar that ringed her neck looked like something more appropriate to a large household pet, complete with metal studs and a glittering identification tag.  As much trouble as he’d obviously gone to to bring her along, she had been reduced to an afterthought as Mal fiddled with whatever was in his hands.  

Victus spared a glance at Lucas, and saw that his lips had pulled back to expose the tips of his canine teeth.  "That son of a bitch," Lucas hissed, through clenched teeth. "There's no way she's legal."

Victus pitched his voice too low for anyone but another varius to hear. "Remember that they develop more slowly than we do," he explained. "Leland would not risk hiring an illegal into the house staff, especially in that capacity."

Before he could reply, the fighter gurgled something unintelligible and dropped to the ground, writhing in agony.  Utterly helpless to assist his charge, Victus stood immobile, hands clasped loosely behind his back. He ached to help, to do something to end this needless suffering, but over the past few months he had learned that when the negin was in a mood like this, the ground he trod was shaky indeed.  The more strongly he reacted, the less likely it was that his student would emerge from this incident alive.  “I cannot train him if he is unconscious,” he said, appearing utterly undisturbed. “Would you please discontinue that?” For all the emotion with which he infused the words, he might have been asking for pickles on his sandwich at the cafe.

Now standing over the fetal form of his newest acquisition with the manner of an aristocrat who was watching something interesting float by in the gutter, the Negin took his thumb off the trigger of the discipline controller and flipped the cover shut.  He gazed down at the writhing form of his new acquisition and waited for the light of coherent thought to return to Lucas MacKenzie’s eyes.  “I thought we might as well get that over with first thing,” the Negin explained, conversationally.  

He ignored Victus like the man was not even in the room. “That was the lowest setting. Well,” he amended with a chuckle, “it’s the lowest one I use with my slaves.  There are weaker settings, but it's pointless to just tickle you so I never use them."  He nodded his head slowly and his face grew somber. "You’re a smart man, Lucas, and you know when you’re doing something wrong.  Giving a warning to a man like you is like counting to three with a toddler,” he went on. “It’s a waste of time, so we'll just start with number three.” He chuckled at some private joke. “They say it feels like being on fire.”

“There are stronger settings too,” he said, returning to his friendly, chatty demeanor, “but if I have to use them on you for more than a few seconds, you may begin to lose your senses permanently.  We don’t want that,” he said, quietly. “You’re going to be my insurance policy, and you can’t do that very well if you’re blind and deaf, can you?”

The negin got down on his knees and bent over the shaking form of his future bodyguard.  Lucas's jaw muscles were spasming erratically, making Victus think of a wild animal that Master Dagen had hit with the monastery's groundcar when they'd been on their way to get ice cream.  They had both cried over the dying creature, and after that Dagen had curtailed his use of the car to reduce the chance of his hurting another animal.  

Negin Mal's reaction was different.  He wet his lips and smiled. “Now, you never have to wonder if I’ll use this,” he said.  “You’ll never have to bother your fuzzy little head wondering if I”ll really do it, because I already have.”  He reached out and stroked the side of Lucas’s face.  From any other man it might have looked tender, but from Rudex Mal it was disturbed.  Slowly, he traced the line of Lucas’s ears, stroking along the growth patterns of his fur until it reached his proud jawline.  And then, slowly, he traced the line of his lips, the way a lover might after a tender kiss.  

Lucas’s body was not yet responding to commands, but his sensitive canine nose could smell traces of sweat and urine on the man’s hands, where he’d gone to the bathroom and not washed afterwards.  Even though he couldn’t yet move, Lucas could feel the Negin’s light caress as he flopped the canine ears back and forth on his head, playing with them as if Lucas were nothing more than a stuffed toy.

With his head tilted to one side in curiosity, the Negin pushed his fingers past Lucas’s trembling lips and traced his teeth, forcing a delicate part of his hand into the other man’s unwilling body, invading his personal space with fingertips that tasted salty in Lucas’s mouth.  Dry, warm fingers grew damp and slippery with Lucas’s saliva as they probed his mouth, running over teeth and tongue in an obscene exploration that Lucas was helpless to stop.  

“Hmmm….” Negin Mal hummed thoughtfully, then pulled his fingers free of his slave’s mouth and wiped them dry on the fighter's shirt. He examined his fingers, and saw a few persistent hairs clinging to them.  He looked at Victus accusingly. "He's getting hair all over the place," he said. "I have no idea why I let you talk me into getting another furbag for a guardian."  He stared disdainfully at Lucas for a few seconds before his face illuminated.."Oh, that’s right!"  The speed with which he jumped from emotion to emotion was more than a little unsettling.

When he looked back at Victus, his face had settled back into its usual competent, if heartless, repose.  After a quiet moment he stood to leave, and before he left he offered one last shred of advice to the man on the floor. “No matter how bad you think things are, Lucas, remember that they could be...worse.”  

As the two walked out the way they'd come, the girl turned back to gaze at the man lying on the ground, no doubt wondering if that would be her some day.  Victus followed them out with his ears, catching Mal muttering quietly to himself, “...so very much worse.”

***

“Thanks for jumping in back there,” Lucas grumbled, his aching skull cradled in his hands. “Good to know you’ve got my back.”

“If I had interfered, the Negin would most likely have killed you,” Victus replied.  “He will not listen to reason when he is in a mood like that, and begging does no good.  It merely feeds his ego, seeing people bend to his will.”

Lucas grunted and ran his tongue over his teeth and gums. “I can’t get that taste out of my mouth.” He stuck his tongue out and looked at the tip of it as if expecting to see that part of it were starting to rot. “I feel violated.”

Victus knelt on the grass across from Lucas. “I hope you understand why he did that, because if you don’t, this was for nothing.”

“Understand what?” Lucas asked, bitterly. “That he’s an asshole?”

“That he controls you, Lucas. That he can do whatever he wants to you, whenever he wants.  If you understand that, he won’t have to do it again.  If you have yet to learn the lesson,” he shrugged. “He will humiliate you on a daily basis until you do learn it.”

“So you just want me to roll over on my back like a good little boy?” Lucas said, scornfully. He suddenly looked disgusted with himself.  “I’m gonna puke.”  Not having time to haul himself anywhere more private, he rolled away from Victus and horked the contents of his stomach onto the synthetic turf.   When he was finished gagging he spat a few times, wiped his mouth, then rolled back to his bottom as if nothing had happened. “You want me to just give up?”

“I want you to live,” Victus corrected. “There is a huge difference between giving up and accepting the inevitable. The sooner you recognize the world for what it truly is, the faster you can change it to be what you want it to be.”

“Is that Confucius?” Lucas joked, his good attitude reasserting itself.

“It is an applied principle of Aikido,” Victus answered, utterly without humor. “Detect an opponent’s strengths and use them against him.”

Lucas had heard fighting platitudes like this before, but they had never been delivered in a way which made them seem authentic.  Not until today. “You gonna teach me how to do that?” he asked, thinking that he’d very much like to break off Negin Mal’s fat little fingers and stuff them down his hairless, flabby throat.

Victus stared at Lucas for a long time, overcome with the irrational feeling that he knew precisely what the other man was thinking, and perhaps even more surprisingly, understanding him. “I will teach you everything you need to know to take my place,” he said, carefully.  “And I must trust that you will be sufficiently intelligent to apply that knowledge responsibly.”

All too well, Lucas understood what the Kenzine was saying.  It all boiled down to, ‘I’ll teach you how to do it, but please don’t kill the negin.’

"Do you accept the lesson?" Victus asked.

Lucas looked at him sourly. "If I say no, are you gonna report back to your boss so he can shock the hell out of me again?" Before the Kenzine could suppress his emotions, Lucas caught him looking offended.

"You misunderstand my relationship to the negin," Victus said, after a pause to remind himself that ignorance was not malice. "If I work for anyone it is for Abbot Wesley of the Kenzine order, but even he does not control my actions.  The council awards protection based on a variety of factors, and even if I don't always agree with their decision I agree that they have more information than I do, and I have made the informed choice to follow their direction of my own free will."  He looked at Lucas archly. "I did not ask if you agree with the lesson, I asked whether you accept it; whether you understood what the negin was trying to teach you."

"Yeah, sure,"  Lucas muttered, wishing this gods-be-damned headache would go away.

"Stay where you are."  Victus got to his feet and re-seated himself behind the fighter's back. "I'm going to touch your shoulders."

Lucas flinched away. "Don't do that pinchy shit!" He yelped, grimacing at the pain caused by his own loud voice.

Unperturbed, Victus grabbed the other man's shoulders and pulled him back upright. "'Pinchy shit' would not work in this case," he explained as he worked. "'Pinchy shit' is useful when there has been a long period of immobility and misalignment of the vertebrae.  Bend forward slightly."  He examined the lack of curve in the fighter's spine and nodded his head in satisfaction. "You have been attempting to follow my instruction regarding posture, so your spine is still in alignment." He gently pressed the pads of his fingers into the muscles on either side of Lucas's neck, then worked his hands downwards along the larger muscles of his shoulders, pushing tension out of them like squeezing toothpaste from a tube.

"Life will be less painful for both of us if you follow my instructions," he said, extending a portion of his consciousness into Lucas as he talked. "Your collar’s discipline function works by using different high frequency radio waves to excite the pain nerve endings.  When the waves resonate," he said, continuing his gentle massage, "they activate your pain receptors. Your body's reflexive response is to open the blood vessels to your brain, giving you a pounding headache."  He extended himself along the nerve pathways until he felt the gordian knot of nerves that was Lucas's brain. Pulling outward to interact with a far less complicated system, Victus soothed the insult to the other man's dilated circulatory system, encouraging the vessels surrounding his brain to contract to their normal diameter and making the headache disappear." How does that feel?" he asked.

Lucas shrugged. "Better." He rolled the last of the tension out of his shoulders and clambered to his feet. "But I don’t like you messing around with my mind."

Victus stood, casually. "I did help the pain go away," he said, "but I did not need to access your memories to do that."

Lucas was instantly on his guard. The stories of Kenzine abilities were legendary, and that's what he'd thought they all were - legends. He'd been kidding around when he'd asked, but now he was actively worried.  How much did the other man know about him, now that he'd been...inside?

"Don't worry," Victus said, hoping his companionable tone would ease Lucas's obvious distress. "I don't know about what you did after your high school prom."

Lucas's eyes narrowed with suspicion. "How could you know about that if you haven't been poking around up there?"

Victus favored him with the same brotherly smile he'd used when Lucas put the underwear on backwards. "Everyone did something embarrassing at their high school prom," he said. "It's universal. Come on," he said, moving away from the fighter, "Let's walk it off." When Lucas followed, Victus continued his explanation. "Your hardware and software are stored in vastly different ways.  I can encourage your body to heal without ever knowing what's going on inside your mind. I can also help your mind to heal in many cases, but that is not as isolated since the mind affects the body in so many ways.”

Despite himself, Lucas was fascinated. "So you really could read my mind if you wanted to?"

"Not if I wanted to," Victus emphasized, "if YOU wanted me to.  Entering an unwilling mind is not something we do."

"Like having sex with a twelve year old girl?" Lucas said, pointedly.

"I would not know about either one," Victus said, ignoring the bait. "People who force their way into other people's minds are ill and must be treated."

"But if we both wanted to, we could see what each other was thinking?" Lucas asked. He looked around them quickly to make sure they were not being observed. "Like ESP, or the bond?"

The mention of a bond caused Victus to think back to his biological parents.  He recognized the thought as a sad one, felt it for a moment, then let it drift away unmolested. "No. The bond is an intimate joining of your consciousness with another’s.  What some Kenzine can do..." he had to pause.  These concepts were difficult enough to discuss between fellow Kenzine; they were almost impossible to explain to an outsider. "Your brain is a huge database," he tried, finally. "It's billions of different facts on note cards which are randomly filed.  Your mind is the index to those memories.  It organizes them and gives them meaning.  When I visit another mind, my mind interprets those billions of facts in ways that are meaningful to me.  Your conscious mind is on one side of the barrier and mine is on the other, so direct communication is impossible."  He stared at Lucas hopefully. "Does any of that make sense?”

"Strangely enough," Lucas said, "Yes. But now I have another question."

"I am not surprised." Victus said. "Please," he indicated with a permissive wave of his hand, "Alleviate your ignorance."

"How can you learn any of this shit from people who- OW!"

"Language," Victus said, withdrawing his hand from flicking the other man's ear.

"Dam...Dang," Lucas said, rubbing his ear, "you got it right on the soft part, too." He sighed and continued. "How could you learn all this from a bunch of sapes?"  He winced and glanced at Victus to see if he was going to get an ear flick for using that pejorative, but Victus ignored it.

Victus cocked his head slightly.  “Didn’t your mother teach you the song?  If you’re ever in need, and need a friend indeed, find a Kenzine… Every child should know that one.”

“Sure,”  Lucas shrugged. “Right after the A-B-C song.”

"That’s not just because they’re honor-bound to help.  Not all of them are mentally mute," Victus told him, "and some of them surpass my healing abilities by a considerable margin.”  He examined his student for a moment, and proclaimed, “You are recovered sufficiently to run.”  He picked up the pace and led Lucas first around the stadium, then outside and around the perimeter of the house grounds.

“I am going to show you your boundaries,” he said, as they approached the end of the driveway. “It is not clearly marked, and you will feel the collar warning you at the lowest level.  Max will be notified at level two, so please do not exceed level one if you wish to maintain privileges.”  Victus carefully traced the limits of Lucas’s free movement, and purposefully exceeded those limits a few times to let the indentured man experience the unmistakable warning.

Lucas thought that the collar’s boundary warning felt like ants crawling across his skin, with the occasional sting to make sure he knew of their presence.  It wasn’t debilitating by any means, but neither was it a pleasant sensation.   As they were running Lucas noticed a change in the Kenzine’s gait, and a moment later the stiff arm maneuver which had knocked him on his ass the day before came at him again.  This time, however, he swerved in time to avoid the brunt of the blow and ran past his teacher.

“Good!” Victus called, from behind him. “You notice the change in my behavior and responded appropriately.”

Lucas could not help grinning in satisfaction.  Not only was he still on his feet, but the Kenzine had found something nice to say to him!  

Victus had caught up and was once again running beside Lucas.  “You did well that time, but next time I will give less notice, and be prepared for a counterattack.”

Step by step, kilometer by kilometer they ran, and one lesson at a time, Victus expanded the limits of Lucas’s abilities beyond what he’d measured on the first day. The third day was much like the second, and the second week was much like the first.

Lucas would not have have said that his limits were being ‘expanded’, though.  He would have said, ‘pushed’.  Every time Lucas managed to achieve a new level or break through a plateau, Victus’s inevitable response was a nod of the head and a curt, “Again.”   

“You have no laurels to rest upon,” was the response when Lucas complained after reaching the end of a twenty kilometer run. “As much progress as you have made, we are still deep in remedial training.”

Lucas felt his ears droop.  “Remedial...training?” he choked out, through gasping breaths.  “I’m not...a fucking kenzine!  I’m just...a bodyguard…for a negin!"

Given the man's agitation, the expletive was understandable and Victus let it go. “Get your breath,” he said, turning and walking back to the mat where he had arranged their training equipment. It was a warm day in the middle of the Galisian summer, and the lack of shade trees on the rear lawn of the house made it an excellent site for endurance training.  Clearing a space, he sat placidly and waited for his student to calm himself.  As he expected, Lucas took a few minutes to get himself under control, then walked over to where Victus sat.  “I’m sorry,” he started, but was halted by Victus’s raised hand.

“You are correct, Lucas,” Victus said, quietly.  “My expectations of you were excessive, and I apologize.”  School had let out for the children of House Mal residents, and a group of them were gathering in a nearby field to play a game involving a large round ball, a net, and a lot of running and yelling. With all the playful activity so nearby, Lucas was having a difficult time keeping his attention on Victus.  The Kenzine sighed and pulled out his comm.  He pushed in Max’s code and waited for the security chief to link in.

As usual, Max was a man of few words. “What?”

“There is a large group of rambunctious children playing to the south of us, about…” he squinted his eyes, “fifty meters outside the house perimeter.”

‘That’s the soccer lot,” Max replied, crisply.  “You want me to chase them off?”

Victus looked up, and saw that Lucas was still far more engaged with the children’s game than he was with his training.  “No,” he said, after a pause.  “I would like you to extend the security perimeter to surround that lot. Can you do that?”

After a short delay, the security chief came back on the line. “Done.”

“Thank you, Max.”  Victus terminated the connection and returned his attention to Lucas.  “We will call it ‘conditioning’,” he said, nodding his head at the playing children.  “I will chart your progress.  Go.”

Lucas looked disbelievingly at his trainer, then broke out in a wide smile. “Really?”  

Victus assumed kneeling posture number three.  “Yes. Unless you would rather join me in an hour of seated meditation.”

Lucas turned tail and ran at top speed for the field full of children.  Victus watched with interest as his student introduced himself to the young sapiens and interjected himself into their game, seemingly without worry that they might protest.  They did not, and soon they were all playing together with gusto.  

During their course of play, Victus noticed that Lucas changed the rules of their game to favor whichever team he was not on, assumedly as a handicap to the varius’s greater size and strength.  Such accommodation to weaker beings was all the evidence Victus needed to convince him of the man’s good nature.

The casual ease with which Lucas integrated with others was another source of interest to him.  Abbot Wesley had authorized Dagen to show Victus any of the classified materials the Kenzine library had stored on the varius development program, and Victus had availed himself of the privilege.  Some of varii's behavioral peculiarities had been associated with the genetic additions to the human genome, but those traits weren’t always predictable. Some varii had no problem whatsoever in operating independently, while most felt anxiety if not allowed to participate in every possible group activity. Analyzing the data from multiple independent studies, Victus had isolated a precious few individuals who had an almost compulsive need to organize those around them into a cohesive group.

The scientists in charge of varius development had associated this behavior with a generalized herding instinct, but that seemed overly simplistic to Victus.  Herders only wanted to group things - the varii who interested Victus weren’t happy unless the entire group was interacting as well.  He’d gone so far as to turn his analysis into a formal paper which was published in a minor journal, but Lucas MacKenzie was his first exposure to the phenomenon in real life.  

During his contemplations, as he watched the other man cavort back and forth across the field with sapiens children half his size, Victus considered that Lucas’s instinctive unifying behavior might have helped him overcome his mixed-race heritage, and it certainly seemed to explain the man’s emotional resiliency. If he were correct about the fighter’s abilities, Victus thought that the negin might have grabbed a tiger by the tail when he purchased Lucas’s contract.  He had no doubts that the man could be an enormously powerful asset, but he might also turn out to be the sort of liability which could bring House Mal to its knees.