Growing up as a slave is not fun. Technically I wasn't one, but in reality I might just as well have been. Both my parents and one set of grandparents were.

My family collapsed financially when I was fourteen, owing more than they could every repay and my parents signed themselves into servitude, along with my mother's parents. We never had to leave Summerland, my system of birth and where my parents' families both came from, as they were bought by a rich magnate and put to work on his home estate on Henry O'Hare's Haven, our homeworld.

I shouldn't have carried any responsibility for my family's debts and wasn't a slave myself, but when their new master offered to see to it that my schooling would be taken care of, even offer me some part-time work to earn a few extra shillings here and there in his manor house, my parents thought that they had had a stroke of luck amidst all their misfortune. The new master was only moderately corrupt, but he simply didn't care about anything he didn't have to, and that made his home open to things which shouldn't have been allowed when he wasn't looking.

His home, virtually a business in itself, was run by his much younger wife and where her husband was just an uncaring fool, she was flat-out twisted.

(Work in progress)