Lord of Raven's Peak - Catherine Coulter [4]
The child rose slowly, holding his ribs, and just stood there, not crying out now, just staring after his brother, and suddenly, quite without warning, Merrik couldn’t bear it. Something gave way deep inside him. No, he couldn’t bear it, he wouldn’t bear it. “Wait here,” he said to Oleg.
He was on his knees in front of the child. He gently cupped the child’s chin in his large hand and lifted it. The tears were still streaming down his dirty face, leaving obscene white marks in their wake. “What is your name?” Merrik said.
The little boy sniffed loudly. He stared at Merrik, his small features so drawn with fear that Merrik said, “I won’t hurt you. What is your name?”
The child said quite clearly, his words only mildly accented, “My name is Taby. That fat man took my—” His voice died, just stopped cold. He looked at Merrik and the tears were thicker now and the child was sniveling and hiccuping. And there was such fear in the child’s eyes that Merrik wanted to snarl like a wolf, but he didn’t. He didn’t want the child to fear him more.
He said only, his voice low, slow, “What is your brother’s name?”
The child ducked his head down and said nothing.
“Is he your brother?”
The child nodded, nothing more. He was very afraid. Merrik didn’t blame him.
Merrik had looked up as he’d spoken, but the merchant was gone. The child was alone. He looked down at that bowed head, saw the child’s thin shoulders heave and shake with his crying. He knew well what became of children who were alone and were slaves. Most of them died, and if they didn’t, well, perhaps what became of them was even worse. Suddenly, Merrik didn’t want this child to die. He took the little boy’s hand, felt the filth on the child’s flesh, felt the delicate bones that would snap like twigs at the slightest pressure, and something lurched inside him. The child wasn’t as thin as his brother, and Merrik knew why. The older brother had given what food he’d gotten to the little boy. “You will come with me, Taby. I will take you from this place. You will trust me.”
The child shuddered at his words and didn’t raise his head or move.
“I know it is difficult for you to believe me. Come, Taby, I won’t hurt you, I swear it.”
“My brother,” the child whispered, and he raised his head then and looked at Merrik with pathetic hope. “My brother is gone. What will happen to him?”
“Come,” he said, “trust me.” He walked away from the line of slaves, the little boy’s hand tucked firmly in his large one.
Merrik knew he would buy the child for a very small weight of silver, and he was right. Soon he had completed his business with Valai, a small man with a twinkling eye and a shrewd, ruthless brain. Valai wasn’t, however, necessarily cruel, just matter-of-fact and spoke his mind when it couldn’t hurt his trade. He said to Merrik, “I know you aren’t a pederast, thus the child will bring you no pleasure and will be only a burden to you.”
“Aye, but it doesn’t matter. I want him.”
“It’s possible that someone would buy him and he would be raised well, used only to service his masters. Not a bad life for such as he. Better than dying, which is what would happen at many other places.”
Merrik said nothing but he felt his guts surge with rage. Aye, the best that could happen would be that the child would be raped endlessly, then trained to pleasure men, those damned Arabs who kept both sexes in their keeping to pleasure them at their whim. After Taby grew up and no longer had a boy’s allure, he would be thrown into the fields to work over crops until he died. And Merrik couldn’t bear that. He looked down at Taby. No, he wouldn’t allow that to happen. He didn’t question what he would do with the child. He paid Valai, then went