Free Jalia At Bay (Book 4) by John Booth

the young slave girl’s body where it lay on the floor. A large pool of blood covered the floor beyond the dead girl’s neck.
    Jalia moved around the fireplace seeking the girl’s head. She found it where it had rolled to one side of the dais. Clouded brown eyes stared up at Jalia. The girl’s mouth was open as if in shock or surprise. She could not have been more than fifteen years old. Jalia picked up the girl’s head reverently, being careful not to pull her hair and placed the head where the body lay.
    “Shall we go and free the living?” Daniel asked from behind. Jalia didn’t jump. She had heard him enter the building, though most people would not have heard him.
    “I hate slavery,” Jalia said quietly. “Perhaps it would be kindest for the world if we ended the Taldon Clan forever, here and now.”
    “People can change, and children change easiest of all.”
    Jalia straightened the head and body of the girl so that they once again looked attached.
    “Let us go and rescue the living then. But if I come back here in ten years’ time and find the Taldon Clan at it again, I shall hold you personally responsible for it, Daniel al’Degar.”
    “You already hold me responsible for the weather,” Daniel muttered under his breath as he followed Jalia out of the room.
    “And I can hear your whispers most clearly, thank you, Daniel,” Jalia said, sounding like an annoyed schoolteacher. She was smiling as she spoke, though Daniel could not see it.
     
    There were nearly forty servants alive when they finally found the dungeons and broke through the doors to get them out. They had been held in two groups differentiated by sex. The men varied in age from early teens to some in their fifties and they were the slightly more numerous of the two groups. The women were all girls, not one of them older than twenty. Judging from their lack of clothes, they had not been kept for cleaning or cooking duties.
    “What are you going to do to us?” one of the oldest men in the group asked Daniel fearfully.
    “You are free. Free to go anywhere and do anything you please.”
    The men muttered among themselves, as freedom without possessions or a place to call your home can be a frightening thing. The young women looked even more worried than the men.
    “I can’t go back home,” a girl aged fifteen or so said desperately. “My village will disown me for the things I have done with these men. They would drive me out if I dared to return.”
    Several of the other girls nodded their heads in agreement.
    Jalia looked at the group in exasperation. They had their freedom, what more did they want? The world was a big place; they should go out and live in it.
    “I have an offer, if you will listen to it,” Dell stated. Everybody turned to look at him. Dell froze at their stares and Malda had to give him a poke to get him talking again.
    “Stay here as free men and women. Become the new Taldon Clan. There are animals here to tend and crops to grow. There was never any need to steal and kidnap, as the land can provide all we need. The soil we stand on is fertile and the wells provide clear water. People have lived here for thousands of years, so why not stay?”
    “I’m pregnant,” one of the women said suddenly. “That was a death sentence for us both under the rule of your grandfather.”
    “Stay and have your child here. The community could do with a few babies,” Dell replied.
    “And live under your rule and at your whim?” the man who had first spoken asked.
    “I have inherited this land and the things on them. I will not see it return to what it was,” Dell nodded towards Jalia and Daniel. “I received a lesson in why that is wrong and I have discovered that mercy still exists in Jallon. I intend to repay that debt. No man or woman will pay tithe to me while they live and work here. The choice of whether you stay or go is yours.”
    “We will have to share what we have,” another man said. “Join together as a