The Dragon Revenant - Katharine Kerr [14]
Sauntering down the streets or crossing from house to house was a constant flow of people, all dressed in tunics and sandals, men and women alike. The men, however, had brightly colored designs painted on one cheek, while the women wore broochlike oddments tucked into their elaborately curled and piled hair, but both ornament and paint identified the wearer’s “house” or clan. Things were so safe then that the children could run loose in packs down the streets, playing elaborate games in the public spaces and private gardens alike without anyone saying a cross word to them or causing them a moment’s worry.
Of course, all this splendor was paid for dearly in human lives, because Myleton was the center of the slave trade in the northern islands. With enough money and a little patience a buyer could find any sort of person there, from a scribe to a midwife to a laborer—even, on occasion, a barbarian from Deverry, though they were rare. The laws were very strict on such matters: Deverrians could be sold into slavery only for certain limited offenses against the state, such as nonpayment of very large debts, destruction of public property on a grand scale, or cold-blooded, premeditated murder. The archons of the various city-states had no desire to see a war fleet of bloodthirsty barbarians sailing their way on the excuse of rescuing some unjustly treated kinsman.
Thus, such exotic purchases were best made not in the public slave markets down near the harbor, where prisoners of war, criminals, and the offspring of state-owned slaves were auctioned off according to a registered bidding schedule, but in the smaller, private establishments scattered around Myleton. There was one such not far from the harbor, on the other side of the Plaza of Government, where a narrow, treeless alley twisted between back garden walls. As it went along, the walls grew lower until they disappeared altogether, and the houses, smaller and poorer until they degenerated into a maze of huts and kitchen gardens, with here and there pigsties, each home to a clutch of small gray-haired pigs.
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 played among them. On the other side was a high wall, striped in blue and red and obviously part of a compound, with an ironbound door in the middle. Although there was no sign or no name carved into the soft wood, those who knew about such things would recognize the place as Brindemo’s market. Those who didn’t know were best off leaving it alone.
Yet, on the inside the compound was no dark and sinister house of horrors. There was an open yard with scruffy grass and ill-tended flowers where during the day the slaves could take the sun, and clean if somewhat shabby dormitories where each piece of valuable property had his or her own bed, and a washhouse where anyone who wanted could bathe at his or her leisure. Although the food was by no means of the same high quality as would grace a rich man’s table, there was plenty of it, and Brindemo and his family ate from the same batch as the merchandise. It was just that Brindemo was known in certain circles for buying slaves that other traders would refuse, slaves whose bills of sale were perhaps not quite in order, slaves who came to him drugged and unable to protest their condition—that sort of thing, perhaps legal, most likely not. Occasionally some unsuspecting beggar lad with no family to miss