QSFer Fyn Alexander has a new MM sci-fantasy dystopian book out: Gold!.
The year is 3,550.
Fifteen hundred years ago, Earth became a very dark place to live. A cabal of evil men was attempting to make the population into Serfs ruled over by the cabal.
Five families decided to leave Earth and find a distant planet to begin again. A group of pioneers traveled to Pleione in the Pleiades star cluster, but the original intention of a utopia soon disintegrated into a world not much better than Earth. The basis of the new system is run like the ancient Roman Republic with a strict caste system. Fifteen hundred years later, the pioneering five families rule the planet with an iron grip.
This is the world in which Jericho Goldsmith, a man from one of the five elite families, and Tenzin Fenn, a Serf sold into slavery by his family, meet and fall in love. But can the two men forge a loving relationship and remain together when they come from such disparate backgrounds and everyone is against them?
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Excerpt
Pushing open the gate, he steeled himself to the task ahead, and walked in. The first thing he saw was a cage holding perhaps twenty men and women. They sat on the concrete ground, all wearing their thin, black, cotton, drawstring trousers and shirts. A couple of women chatted together, sharing a joke and laughing despite their predicament. The men too talked as if they were seated in a café on a nice afternoon. They accepted their lives and got on with it. Jericho needed to do the same.
As he looked them over, a young lad lying curled up, his head resting on a rolled-up straw pallet and dead to the world, caught his eye. When he walked over to the cage, he drew the attention of all the slaves. That he was wearing leather identified him as Senator caste, making the slaves get to their feet, all except the boy who remained asleep.
A male slave walked over to the lad and nudged him with his foot, awakening him. Seeming disoriented, he sat up.
“Stand up, boy,” Jericho ordered.
Waiting a full ten or fifteen seconds before he obeyed, the boy arose. His thinness made Jericho’s heart ache, even as the beauty of his fine, delicate features and the blueness of his eyes attracted him in a way he had not experienced before. But the young man was a slave and therefore off limits in that way. Jericho would never put his hands on a man who could not refuse him should he want to.
“Are you tired?”
“Yes…Master.”
The delay in using the proper address did not go unnoticed any more than the young man’s reluctance to obey at once. But perhaps he was merely worn out.
“What your name?”
“Tenzin, Master.”
“Your age?”
“Eighteen, but I might have turned nineteen. I’m not quite sure, Master. I don’t remember when my birthday is.”
“What did you do in your last place?” At last the boy met his gaze. He was lovely, but he looked as if he needed a home and someone to love him more than he needed hard work.
“I’ve always been a house slave. I’ve spent a lot of time in the kitchen, but I’m not a cook, Master. Nor am I a whore.”
Taken aback by the remark, Jericho was momentarily angered. Did the slave sense his attraction? “I don’t need a cook. I need someone to clean–– and to mind their mouth.”
“I can clean, Master.”
Every response was said in the same flat tone and each one bordered on impertinence.
“Who owned you until now?” Jericho asked.
Still in the same flat tone, the boy said, “I spent three years in the household of Mr. Ashley Cibus, and then a year with Mr. Reed Cibus. The last two years I’ve been in the household of Mr. Ajax Ore Miner.”
“Then you are acquainted with his son, Xerxes?”
“I am. Unfortunately. Xerxes Ore Miner runs that house and Mr. Ajax lets him.”
Behind Jericho, a man said, “Can I help you, Senator?”
Jericho turned to see the slave wrangler. Not only was the man grubby, but an odor of unwashed sweat emanated from him, making Jericho’s nose wrinkle. Wanting to get out of there as fast as possible, he asked, “How much for this slave?”
“He’ll go up on the dais for the afternoon’s bidding, sir. I can’t say how high his price will go, but he won’t be too expensive. I’m bound by law to tell prospective buyers if a slave has any impediment, and his former master said he is sullen and insolent.”
Looking into the slave’s eyes, Jericho asked, “Are you sullen and insolent, Tenzin?”
“My former master also said I was lazy. All I can promise, Master, is that I’m not lazy.”
A smile cracked Jericho’s face. “At least he’s honest. I like honesty, and I have no time to hang about the auction hall. Will you take two hundred and fifty daroes?”
He wanted to spend as little money as possible, but he wanted this boy. Something inside him made him want to take the lad home–– if only to feed him. There was a quality about him, an emptiness, as if he had never been loved, that made Jericho sad. Johnathan Goldsmith may spend his days studying and not be the father Jericho needed to support him in his ventures, but at least he had always known he was loved.
The wrangler looked Tenzin up and down as if he were appraising a piece of horseflesh. “He’s young, and if you feed him properly, he’ll be quite strong. Whatever he sells for, I get no more than twenty daroes from the deal, while the auctioneer gets fifty. The rest goes to his old master. But I’m not supposed to sell slaves out of the back gate. On the dais he might go as high as three hundred.”
As much as Jericho did not want to be seen in the auction hall, neither did he want the slave’s price to go over the three hundred he could afford. “Then how would it be if I gave you the two hundred and fifty, and an extra twenty daroes on top of your share to go in your own pocket?”
The wrangler shrugged, looking about him surreptitiously, perhaps in fear of being heard. “For you, Senator, I’ll do it, though I wouldn’t for anyone else.”
“Really?” Jericho suspected it wasn’t the first time the man had made such a deal.
From the pocket of his leather trousers he pulled out his wallet and counted two hundred and seventy daroes. The man licked his lips while looking at the money, making Jericho suspect he would log the sale at one hundred and fifty and keep the difference, but he didn’t care.
Author Bio
Fyn Alexander is the author of 23 LGBT books. She resides in rural Canada but grew up in England where she visit regularly.
| Author Website | https://fynalexander.wordpress.com/ |
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| Author Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/FynAlexander |
| Author Twitter | https://twitter.com/FynAlexander |