The Commander's Collar

CHAPTER 7-- NERIA

LYRA ARDEN

Neria taught me there was a hierarchy even in the way a woman was owned. I met her while carrying sheets.

I had turned a corner with a pile so high I could barely see and walked straight into her.

The fabric fell and I cursed without thinking. She laughed.

It was the first female laugh I had heard since arriving at the fortress. Not a moan behind a door, crying in a line, or a low voice asking permission.

It was a simple laugh, and that made me look.

She had to be twenty-eight or thirty. Brown skin, thick hair tied in a long braid, wide hips beneath a red dress that left her shoulders completely bare. The clothing was beautiful and clearly expensive, but there was no ignoring the metal around her neck.

Worked silver.

A small blue stone in the center.

"Sorry," I said, crouching to pick up the sheets.

"You're very pretty."

I stopped.

"I have a name." I joked with her.

"Then the rumors haven't found it yet..."

She crouched too, helping me.

"My name is Neria."

"Lyr..."

"I know."

I blinked, confused, and she laughed again at my expression.

"You really are funny."

I looked at the collar.

She noticed.

Women noticed when someone looked. Maybe because everyone looked.

"You can ask if you want."

"Sorry... I didn't mean to stare..."

She picked up a sheet and folded it carefully.

"This collar means upper-house residence. I can't be resold without authorization from the house council. I have my own chambers, three maids, a monthly allowance, and I can choose who enters my room as long as my patron hasn't summoned me. Usually they pay according to the number of men I can attend to."

Neria did not speak about collars with the indignation I expected. She spoke like someone explaining types of fabric.

Gold meant prestige, exclusivity.

Iron, restraint.

Silver, domestic bond in some houses.

Certain seals burned if a woman crossed a marked boundary. Others transmitted her approximate location to the owner.

As she explained, she slipped a finger beneath her own collar and scratched irritated skin. That small gesture struck me harder than any speech.

"Have you never wanted to take it off?" I asked.

She took a while to answer.

"Wanting and being able to are different things."

I did not know what to say. I had grown up dreaming of freedom because my father had given me a place where it existed. Neria had grown up without even a vocabulary for it.

I blinked.

"And you think this is good?"

She looked at me as if I had asked whether water was dry.

"Compared to what?"

The question silenced me.

"To freedom..." I answered.

"That doesn't exist for us, women..."

She said it without drama. That was exactly what hurt.

Neria placed the last sheet on the pile.

"I was born registered. My mother belonged to a merchant house. When I reached legal age, I was evaluated and transferred. First to a magistrate. Then to an officer. Now I'm here."

"Transferred?"

"Sold, if you prefer the ugly word."

"Sorry, but the word isn't the problem."

"No." She touched the blue stone on her collar. "It never is."

We walked together down the corridor.

We passed two women accompanied by guards. One wore gold and had a belly rounded by pregnancy. The men stepped aside for her immediately.

"That's Serah," Neria said. "She's carrying a child of a high bloodline. No one touches her without losing a hand."

"Is that why they're so worried about her?"

Neria gave me a sideways look.

"You really did come from a farm."

"I don't understand..."

"They're worried about what she's carrying. That's different."

My chest tightened.

She continued:

"A fertile woman is worth more. One who has already had daughters is worth much more. Some beast bloodlines go fifty, sixty years without a single female. When one is born, she's registered before she even receives a name."

I remembered Elias reciting the numbers beside the fire, always as though talking about bad weather. The rate had collapsed many years ago, perhaps hundreds, long before he was born. The effect was simple: more males with each generation, fewer females, more laws turning women into a resource.

"Are you forced to get pregnant?" I asked directly.

Neria stopped.

She really looked at me.

"We try to see it as something good. It helps a little."

"Something good? How can being forced to do something be good?"

She sighed and stopped beside me in the corridor, as if trying to explain things to a child.

"The world is ending, Lyr... If we don't reproduce, everything ends."

"But... against your will? Wouldn't it be better to let everything end? Or better to run away, live your life far from all this, from these..." I looked at her neck before continuing, "far from these collars..."

"And how would I run?" she answered directly. "My collar alerts them if I cross the fortress boundaries. If I try to cut it, it heats up. If I run, they know where I am."

She said it while touching the metal with the tip of her finger.

"Besides, how long do you think a woman would survive outside alone? How long do you think it would take before someone put another one of these around my neck?"

I had no answer. The words died in my throat.

She started walking again.

"Maybe... I just think it's too wrong."

"What you know is luxury, Lyr."

"What?"

"Being born a man, having lived free. That gives you enough to compare it to."

That sentence followed me for the rest of the day.

At the end of the corridor, Neria took half the sheets from my arms.

"A piece of advice..."

I looked at her as we started walking again.

"Never let Drevan call you into his chambers alone."

"Drevan?"

"Captain of the eastern wing. Tall, short horns. A beautiful smile... and hands that don't understand the word no."

My expression must have changed, because Neria exhaled through her nose with concern.

"Since women are scarce and there are limits on requests each month, he usually calls the more... delicate boys to satisfy himself," she said, looking me up and down. "Since there are no rules about what he can do to them, Drevan usually isn't gentle... So be careful."

I felt my blood turn cold.

The problem was that men had already looked at me. And I was beginning to discover that, in that place, being mistaken for a boy did not mean being safe.

It only meant being in a different kind of danger.