Health, Injury, and Correction
A slave's health is her owner's expense and obligation, and the two are not the same thing. The expense is what treatment costs. The obligation is that she gets it.
Health and injury
- Telling him
- She is required to say when she is unwell. It is not a favor and not a complaint; looking after her health is part of what she is for, and a slave who hid a fever until she collapsed has failed at something. She is generally believed, because the alternative is a household that finds out too late. A slave who lies about being ill has spent the only thing she had.
- Who treats her
- A physician, usually the family's own; a separate cheaper man for the slaves is a thing some households do and it is noticed. The examination happens with her alone, because a physician needs her to answer honestly rather than carefully. Her refusal holds here too, and means something different: refusing an examination is not refusing use, and a refused physician tells her owner and does not proceed.
- What he sees
- The physician is the only outsider who routinely sees a slave's body and hears her without her owner in the room — a consequence of the arrangement, not an accident. He is discreet by trade, and an injury he can see is outside the limits of that discretion. In Shining Reach he has law and a magistrate; elsewhere he has his own withdrawal and his own mouth, and a physician who stops attending a household, or says what he saw to people who matter, has done more than a court would. None of it rests on her word; what he reports is what he saw, which is a free man's account.
- When treatment costs more than she is worth
- The world does not permit the obvious answer. Letting a slave die of something treatable because treating her was costly is abandonment and is seen as such. What an owner may do is transfer the cost — sell her to the physician, who recovers his outlay by selling her on when she is well, or to a slaver house on the same terms. Neither is shameful, though a household that does it has admitted something about its finances. The Hearth Keeper's Guild sometimes pays for a member who cannot.
- Lasting injury and chronic illness
- She is kept in most households and moved to work she can do; a household does not dispose of a person it has had for years because her hip has failed. Selling her in that condition is legal and looks exactly as bad as it is.
- When no physician is there
- The decision falls to whoever is in charge — a wife, a friend, a captain, the senpei. Where there is nobody it falls to her, one of the few places a slave decides outright, because her keeping is her duty as much as his.
- Death
- Her household buries her. What is done beyond that depends on its faith — as a member where the faith holds that death levels everyone, as a slave where it holds that station persists — and a fond household often does more than the faith requires, and the neighbors notice which.
Correction
Correction is purposeful, proportionate, and aimed at an end. Anything outside those three is abuse, and there is no third category. The end is the whole of it: correction exists so that a thing does not happen again, which means she has to understand what happened and why, and it has to stop when the point is made.
- What gets corrected
- A fault, not a mistake. A mistake is fixed by saying what to do next time; a man who made an event of it has told the room more about himself than about her. A fault is not caring, not learning, or not saying — the slave who made a performance of an apology, the one told three times without changing, the one who hid a fever. A household that corrects for mistakes is a household no one wants to work near.
- Never in anger
- A man who corrects while angry has lost his self-mastery, which is the very thing the arrangement requires him to demonstrate; force in temper is the confession of weakness made twice. This is the rule and it is not always kept. What is visible is only what happens in front of the household, and she has no standing to say so — one of the places the abolitionists put their finger.
- She is told why
- Always, and before anything else. A correction that teaches nothing is not a correction; a man who corrects in silence is punishing without instructing, which is a different act with a different name. Explaining softens nothing and is frequently the worst part.
- The ordinary instruments
- Most correction never touches her. The word — Yuno dropped mid-sentence, her name said a particular way, the formal register inside a house that does not use it. Distance — sent from the room, fed by hand, put on the floor where she usually is not, moved from the bed to the floor beside it. Cold countenance — the strongest thing he has, since her whole position rests on being known by him and near him, and withdrawing that costs her more than a strapping. Consequence — she lost his money through carelessness and the household is short this week, and she is short with it.
- Physical correction
- It exists, is rare, and is a long way down the list. What it is done with is the owner's business. The ceiling is the same that governs everything else: a correction that requires a physician is not a correction; it is abuse, and a physician called for that reason has learned something and will act on it. Past that, what is permitted varies — Stormharbor allows a great deal, Shining Reach much less and has law for it, the Coves have no law and men who take issue settle it directly. In five cities it is watched, and sanoeva does the rest.
- When it is not working
- Correction repeated three times has stopped being correction and become a fact about the household. The first answer is escalation, which is where physical correction usually comes from. The second is harder: some faults were never faults, but a person put where her nature does not fit. The word is Saenydd, and the Hearth Keeper's Guild will say it to a member's face. He did not fail at correcting her; he failed at matching her, and the remedy is different work or a sale to someone who needs what she actually is.
- Who may correct her
- Any free person, with words. The senpei, the slaves under her. Anything physical belongs to whoever owns her — not a guest, not a passer-by, not another household's senpei. A free person who puts hands on another man's slave has damaged his property and insulted his mastery, which are the same offense.
- Public or private
- A fault committed in front of people is often corrected in front of them; most correction is private because most faults are.
- Ending it
- A correction has to close. Where it was an act with an end, it closes itself. Where it was withdrawal, it often does not, and this is where many decent men fail: she cannot tell whether she is still being corrected or he is simply tired, and she cannot ask, because asking is a challenge. So he says something ordinary that makes plain the thing is closed. A man who leaves her guessing has extended the correction past its purpose without deciding to. Permanent withdrawal is not a correction; it is nothing, and a household frozen like that is usually a marriage problem or a money problem wearing a slave's face.