The Bristling Wood - Katharine Kerr [181]
Finally the alley gave a last twist and debouched into an open square where weeds pushed aside sparse cobbles and chickens scratched, squawking every now and then at the small children who shared the space with them. On the other side was a high wall, striped in blue and red and obviously part of a compound. In the middle was an iron-bound door. Everything made Taliaesyn uneasy: the thick wall, gaudy but practically a fortification; the stout door, as heavily reinforced as a Deverry dun. Briddyn glanced his way and smiled in a peculiarly unpleasant way, then included Gwin in the gesture.
“Here’s where you two say farewell,” he said in Deverrian.
He made a fist and pounded on the door, over and over until they heard a voice scream in Bardekian that its owner was on the way. The door opened a crack, then wider, and a slender, dark boy of about fifteen, wearing a pale blue tunic, made a low bow to Briddyn.
“Baruma, master! How can I serve you?”
“Is your father in? I have someone to sell.”
“The barbarian? Oh, he’ll be very interested.”
They followed the lad down a narrow corridor to a long room with a blue-and-white-tiled floor and dark green walls. At one end was a low dais, strewn with many-colored cushions, where a fat man with pale brown skin and black curly hair sat cross-legged before a low table. When they came in, he looked up from what Taliaesyn took to be a game played on a circular board.
“Baruma!” He heaved himself to his feet only to make a deep bow. “I am honored, honored.” Yet, as he went on, speaking too fast for Taliaesyn to understand, he seemed far more frightened than overwhelmed at the honor of entertaining Briddyn.
The two men bargained quickly in shrill voices, waving their hands around, making dramatic grimaces, seeming to threaten each other, but always, Taliaesyn noticed, Briddyn won his points. Finally the slave dealer, whose name turned out to be Brindemo, unceremoniously ordered the prisoner to strip, then ran his hands down Taliaesyn’s arms and back, poked his legs like a horse dealer, and even looked into his mouth. By the end of it, Taliaesyn was thinking murder.
“Deverrian, are you?” Brindemo said in a reasonably sound accent. “A dangerous man, then. I speak your ugly tongue. See? One wrong move or word, and I have you whipped.”
Then he turned back to Briddyn, who took the bill of sale out of the pouch at his belt and handed it over. Taliaesyn noticed the dealer’s eyes narrow suspiciously as he looked at it. When they started speaking again, somewhat slower, Taliaesyn could pick out phrases here and there. It seemed that Briddyn was suggesting that the trader sell him to the copper mines in the high mountains of the southwest or perhaps to the archon’s fleet of galleys. His stomach cramped in fear at the thought; he remembered enough to know that slaves sold to those lives died soon—and were glad to. Brindemo gave him one last look, then returned to Briddyn.
“How much opium have you been giving him, honored master?”
“Not much and not for long.” He went on to say something incomprehensible that pleased Brindemo, because the fat trader nodded and smiled.
Coins changed hands, then, close to twenty gold pieces as far as Taliaesyn could see. Brindemo took the bill of sale, tucked it into his own pouch, then escorted Briddyn, Gwin, and the mute to the door while his son held Taliaesyn on a short, tight chain. When the trader came back, he considered his new slave for a long, shrewd moment.
“You cannot run away, Taliaesyn of Pyrdon. If you do, the archon’s men hunt you down—”
“And kill me. I know that.”
With a little nod, Brindemo unlocked the collar and took it off his neck.
“This will chafe and leave ugly sores. We must have you look pretty.”
“And will that matter in the mines?”
“Oho! You understand some Bardekian, do you? Better and better. The mines? Hah! Baruma leaves on the morrow. He comes through