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By Root 535 0

village over, and theirs lost. Over who had the better goatskins to dress their wives in, no doubt. They’re from the far north, the islands. Have you heard about those places? Animals, of course, but proud in their own way. The men are warriors and I’ve heard the women are too. Don’t wash, don’t shave, eat dog, healthy as horses and almost as tall. That’s just the women. This one’s not full-grown yet. Another year or two and she’ll be a monster like the others. I had some men, too, but they went fast. Like oxen, wonderful for field work. Hair down to here.” The slaver slaps his own ass. “The men, I mean. All reds, like that.” He points at my tiny girl. “You know that’s real, by the way? Pull it out and check it from the root if you don’t believe me. A conversation piece for your neighbours, just for starters. Twelve, thirteen years, I put her at. Hard to say exactly with these people. You’d be her first owner. You can train her up just the way you want her.”

Callisthenes nods at her foot, which is heavily bandaged.

“May I see?” I bend down. She glances at the slaver, but I don’t need to unwrap it: the smell is of gangrene. How she jumped up and down on it is amazing. I send her back.

“Can’t say I mind,” the slaver says. “I might keep her myself. Doesn’t speak a word other than gibberish. Bites. I adore her.”

“You want that foot seen to. It might have to come off.” My father would have offered to do the job himself. I still have his saws somewhere. Me, I don’t even ask what happened. Am I the more worldly or was he? Two left: a tall one from the same village as the tiny girl, I’d guess, with the same rusty colouring and a more general, less attractive speckling of the skin—a rash, on closer inspection, peeling and bloody by the hairline—and an older one with a sullen face who looks me in the eye like that’s her way of spitting.

“Can you cook?” I ask her.

“Hey fuck you.” Her Greek is heavily accented but clear enough. She’s dark, not red, but I noticed her earlier muttering to one of the others. Either they share a language or she’s out of her mind.

“What can you cook?”

“I cook poison for you. Your wife, your children. All dead by morning.”

Her teeth are good; I sniff her breath while she’s talking and there’s no rot there. She’s solid, solidly hipped, with a good colour in her skin. She stands with her feet braced, hands in loose fists. She looks me in the eye. I like her.

“You like everyone,” Callisthenes says.

Her hair is shot through with grey and she’s deeply tanned; I see the paler lines in the crinkles around her eyes. Happier days, once, maybe. “What’s the story with this one?”

“I don’t know why you bother asking,” Callisthenes says afterwards, as we’re walking home. “They only ever tell you what they think you want to hear. Did you see how happy he was to get rid of her?”

“You think I fell for it?”

The woman walks a few paces behind us. The slaver offered to rope her wrists for me to lead her like a horse, but I declined. If she runs, Callisthenes will catch her and then we’ll all know where we stand.

“Maybe just a little bit,” Callisthenes says.

“Hey fuck you,” the woman says. “He got deal. I’m cook like how you say.”

“She’s cook like how you say.” Callisthenes turns to the woman. “What was in the tent?”

She shrugs, makes a loose fist with one hand, and plugs a finger in and out of the hole with the other. “Customer.”

“And where are you from?”

She says a name, a guttural I can’t get my mouth around. She laughs when I try.

“Forest country?”

“Sea. Real sea. Cold, not like here.”

“Somewhere up north,” Callisthenes says helpfully.

“Far.” She ignores him, looks at me, seeing I want to know. “You no go farther. You fall off edge.”

“Of the land, or the sea?”

“Sea pour off edge to hell,” she clarifies.

It’s fun to watch Athea—that’s her name—and Pythias take each other’s measure.

“Thank you.” Pythias’s face lights with surprise.

“Hey fuck you,” Athea says.

Sometimes I mistake Pythias for being frailer than she is.

“Don’t speak to me so rudely,” Pythias says. “We are kind to each other in this