Kushiel's Mercy - Jacqueline Carey [98]
We strolled over to a blue tent where the slave-merchant Strytanus did indeed keep a healthy stable.
I’d been to slave-markets before, but only in her ladyship’s company, and only knowing that any slave purchased on Cythera would serve no more than seven years’ time, which really wasn’t much worse than the custom of indentured service in Terre d’Ange. And, of course, any slaves purchased by her ladyship were given their freedom and the opportunity to enter her service, which served the dual purpose of assuaging her ladyship’s deep-seated remorse for her son’s suffering, as well as building her loyal network.
This was different.
Carthage had no such laws. Most of the slaves sold here would live and die as slaves, unless by some chance they were clever or useful enough to rise very, very high in their master’s estimation. And anyone being sold for brute muscle was unlikely to stand such a chance.
“Where are you from?” I asked an older hulking fellow with a squashed nose.
“Hellas,” he said briefly. “I was a wrestler.”
“What happened?” I asked.
He eyed me warily. “Lost too many matches and fell into penury. Why do you care?”
“Hey!” The slaver Strytanus struck him across the broad shoulders with a narrow rod. “Mind your tongue.”
The wrestler didn’t flinch, but his gaze slid away from mine.
I talked to a few others, a process the slaves, slave-merchant, and Maharbal found quite bizarre. In the end, I settled on the wrestler, a pair of lean, hungry-looking Carthaginian brothers who’d known a lifetime of deprivation, and a fierce Amazigh with a branded cheek who refused to talk.
“You’re mad,” Maharbal said affably. “The Hellene’s too old, the Carthaginians are malnourished—through no fault of Strytanus’, I’ll hasten to add—and the Amazigh’s like to slide a dagger between your ribs.”
I smiled at him. “We’ll see.”
Strytanus had grown distracted by a new customer, a Carthaginian lady seeking a pretty boy to decorate her household. She was contemplating a slender lad of some ten or eleven years, with curly black hair and fear-stricken eyes.
“Is he biddable?” she fretted.
The slave-merchant spread his hands. “My lady, I make no claims. He is Aragonian, one of the first fruits of the spoils of war. You asked for pretty and he is that. If he is wise, he will be grateful for your gentle mercy.”
“Yes, yes.” The woman waved one hand. “Does he at least speak Hellene?”
“I fear he does not,” Strytanus said in an apologetic tone.
She tilted her head, considering the boy. He stared back at her, wide brown eyes filled with terror and incomprehension. For some reason, the sight made me feel sick inside.
“I think not,” the Carthaginian woman said decisively. She gestured to her attendants. “Next!”
The boy gazed after her as she swept away toward the next tent full of human merchandise, unsure what had transpired. Knowing only that he was alone in the world, friendless and bereft.
“Forgive me.” Strytanus approached, bowing. “You have made your choice, my lord?”
“Indeed.” I wrenched my gaze from the Aragonian boy.
Strytanus noticed. “Is my lord . . . interested?”
“Alas, no.” I forced a smile. “Shall we talk?”
We haggled over the bearers I’d chosen. In the end, I daresay I got a fair price, since I’d chosen men the slaver was eager to dispose of. Not so good a price as I might have gotten. I was distracted by the boy.
“Very good,” Strytanus said smoothly when our deal was concluded. “I shall have them delivered to your household in a matter of hours.”
I inclined my head. “My thanks.”
Our business finished, Maharbal and I departed. I felt the Aragonian boy’s eyes burning holes in my back, starved for some word or gesture of kindness. I wished I could have spared him. But I’d already told Maharbal I wasn’t in the market for aught but bearers. And as the slave-trader had said, he was but the first of many. The spoils of war. There would be others.
Many others.
I could best help them by completing my