Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1922: Unique Interview Method

"On the quiet days," Jasmine amended.

"And when one of them plants herself in front of a forge and won’t leave," Lucille said, and her smile went slow and warm, "or takes a market ledger apart for fun, then we know what she is. And we feed it. Special education from there."

"But we have to be careful," Jasmine was already searching for vulnerabilities. "We shouldn’t force a kid to become a farmer for life just because he liked how a cow sounds at age ten."

"Right, right," Lucille nodded along.

"When Quin hears of this, he’s going to be smug for a week," Serika called from under her pile of children.

"He will be smug about it forever," Jasmine corrected fondly, "and fund it without reading a single page."

"And pamper us all with his overwhelming love afterward..." Lucille muttered, eyes dreamy.

"...Correct," the Villain’s dutiful governor smirked, gaze hungry for the reward she knew she deserved.

...

The line at the townhouse’s side entrance had formed before noon the next day, and it was quiet in a way market lines never were.

Word had gone out through the wards with the previous morning’s bread carts: the Villain’s family wanted matrons, cooks, cleaners, and minders for the count’s old townhouse.

War widows first. Paid in coin. Children of employees enrolled free.

The capital did not lack for war widows, and each woman in that line had spent the winter learning exactly what the city offered her.

Nothing.

If they didn’t want to see their children starve, their options ran like this:

Sell the furniture, then the roof, then themselves, and when that ran out, the children.

That was the whole market.

Now there was a fourth thing on it that was none of those, and a table standing between them and it.

The table had two women behind it, and the line could not decide which of the two frightened it more.

The screening had been Black Fang’s, proposed over breakfast in the voice she used for casualty counts.

"Put a slave collar on every applicant," she had said. "Then ask her whether she wants to molest children."

Lucille had objected that they were hiring grieving mothers, not prisoners.

"An honest answer costs an honest woman nothing but a minute of her freedom," the Venomborne Terror reasoned.

Vex had voted yes twice, for emphasis.

"Name?" Vex asked brightly, quill poised, red eyes shining with civic enthusiasm.

"M-Mara, my lady. Mara Wint. I have two boys. I kept a tavern kitchen before the war took... before." Her hands strangled each other at her waist. "I can cook for a hundred. I swear I can cook. Just give me the opportunity."

"Wonderful~! One small formality." Vex turned the smile up a notch. "Master? She’s ready."

The woman beside Vex had not smiled all morning, or, by most accounts, ever.

Black Fang set the collar on the table between them: plain slave iron, rune-cut, the same pattern that rode her throat back in Elvardian captivity.

Locked shut, it took refusal away. Asked a question by the hand that closed it, the woman inside answered, and the runes burned if what came out of her was not the truth.

"Absolutely standard hiring practice," Vex chirped. "Put it on, answer one question, and you’re hired. Oh, and the collar will of course come off, too."

Mara looked at the collar for a long moment, then lifted her chin and held herself still while Black Fang closed it around her throat. The runes woke, faint and orange.

"State your intentions toward the children who will be in your care without holding a single detail back," Black Fang said.

"I... want to feed them?" Mara looked between the two women, terrified of getting the truth wrong.

"Mine first, if I’m honest. But I kept the neighbor’s girls fed all autumn too, and I don’t hit children, and I want... that sounds like begging. I’m sorry. I want a wage. I want to stop being afraid of the thaw."

Her voice cracked on nothing at all. "That’s everything that’s in me, my ladies. I swear it."

The runes stayed quiet. Black Fang opened the collar.

"Acceptable."

"You passed~!" Vex translated, delighted, stamping the contract. "Kitchen wing, morning shift. Your boys will be educated while you work. Sign here~"

Mara stared at the contract, then at the wage line on it, and her knees quit.

She went down onto the boards on both of them and stayed there, one hand fisted in the hem of Black Fang’s coat, forehead pressed to her own knuckles, saying thank you over and over into the floor.

She had walked into that house an hour ago expecting to be turned away at the door.

She wept into her fists, tried twice to apologize for it, and failed both times.

...

Night came down softly over the Program.

Lamps went out wing by wing. In the dormitories, the capital’s newest students slept in real beds under new linen, several still wearing the socks they had refused to surrender. In the kitchen wing, dough rose for a breakfast someone was being paid to cook.

A matron on her first shift walked the halls twice as often as her rounds required, checking on sleeping children nobody was coming to take.

Vex stood at the corridor window at the end of the dormitory wing, where the lamplight didn’t quite reach.

She had been there a while. The courtyard below sat empty, blue with snow-light. The glass held her reflection: white hair, red eyes, the mark of the man she loved warm and hidden beneath her clothes.

Some of the small sleepers behind her had no one at all. Vex kept her eyes on the glass, held her own elbows, and said nothing.

Black Fang walked down the corridor past midnight, on her way to nowhere she would ever explain, and stopped at the window beside her disciple.

"I’m so happy right now..." Vex whispered. "My chest just wants to burst with joy."

"..." Black Fang watched her own expression in the reflection.

She didn’t seem happy.

"I could’ve done this long before. I had the means." Her eyes flashed bright purple. "Instead, I killed and sold drugs."

Vex’s eyes widened. She reached out and hugged her mother-figure by the waist.

"Master, that’s just not true! You raised us while you were hunted by the whole world. You were dealt a hand worse than anyone, yet look at what you became."

Red eyes flared, crimson and violet staring at each other in the reflection.

Vex’s arms tightened as she smiled. "Just today, you helped us protect the innocence of hundreds of children with your idea, while sending pedo scum to hell."

"..."

"If you keep sulking, I’ll get mad!" Vex finally stomped, hissing low enough not to wake anyone.

"...I don’t sulk."

"..." Vex’s eyes turned wry. "Liar."

"No."

"Yes."

"...No."

As the two women argued back and forth, the night’s first snow began to fall on the Elysiar Youth Program.