If they learned that a slave (though not convict slaves sentenced to labor for their crimes), a prostitute, or a person in the slums could write and do arithmetic, they would even go as far as buying them out of bondage to welcome them into their service. The ones who could just write and do arithmetic got this treatment, so if there was someone who was especially good at it, the situation could get pretty incredible.
I want to make you a magistrate! a noble might say. But you’re not from a high enough class! I know — by adopting you as a relative, I can forcibly raise you to a higher social status!
Because of nobles who thought like that, there had been commoners and slaves who’d risen meteorically in a way that normally wouldn’t have been possible. Right after I’d told Maria that she should take the abolition of slavery in the Empire slowly because it would be too major of a reform and would face resistance, had I just caused the class system in my own country to collapse?
“I wonder if I can take advantage of this to make the abolition of slavery something that exists only in name…” I murmured.
“Ah! Speakin’ of slaves, that reminds me,” Roroa said, clapping her hands. “Now, this here’s some information I received through Sebastian after he opened a second location for The Silver Deer here in Parnam, but there’s an unusual slave trader in the city.”
“An unusual slave trader?” I asked.
Roroa laughed mischievously. “I’m thinkin’ they’re the sort of person you’d like to have workin’ for you, Darlin’. Hee hee! How’s about you and I go bumble around town sometime, and we can meet up with them then?”
“Murgh… Would that not be a date?” Aisha complained, looking a bit upset. “No fair.”
Roroa waved her hand. “From what I’ve been hearin’, all of you have had dates with our Darlin’ before. We’re engaged to get hitched now, so I wanna have some lovey-dovey time with my Darlin’, too.”
“I was only there as a bodyguard. He never took me on a date!” Aisha protested.
“Well, you can come along too then, Big Sister Ai,” said Roroa. “We’ll be needin’ a bodyguard anyway.”
“In that case, I see no problem with it.” Having been invited along, Aisha was easily mollified.
Liscia and Juna both said, “We’ll let Roroa have this one,” so it was decided that Roroa, Aisha, and I would go out into the town of Parnam together.
An unusual slave trader, huh? I was a little interested to find out what they were like.
I’m Ginger Camus, age 17. I’m from the Elfrieden Kingdom… Oh, I guess it’s the Kingdom of Friedonia now, huh. Anyway, I’m a slave trader in the capital of the Kingdom of Friedonia.
…Yeah. I’m a slave trader.
Not exactly a respectable job, huh? It’s people buying and selling people, after all.
Well, aside from the convict slaves, most of them were economic slaves who couldn’t afford to eat and didn’t want to go hungry, or who had sold themselves because they needed money; so, in a way, it could have been seen as a sort of welfare system, but… it wasn’t a job you could do without having thick skin.
Me? Mine was thin, you know? Like, paper thin, okay? I fought with stomach pain every day.
Now, you might be wondering what a guy like me was doing as a slave trader. It was because my grandpa who was also a slave trader had passed away. My parents had already passed on, and my grandpa had raised me all by himself, and I’d literally never found out what he did until after he’d died.
When the funeral had ended and I’d been sorting through his estate, that was when I’d come across this store and the slaves he owned.
I can’t do this! I had wanted to scream. Even if you leave all this to me, I have no idea what to do about it!
I had thought of just selling them all off to other slave traders, then finding some other business to make whatever meager living I could, but… when I actually looked at the slaves who were property, I was wordless.
“Erm…”
I had gathered all of the slaves who were the merchandise in one place. There were around twenty slaves of various races and genders ranging from children to middle-aged lined up in front of me. They each wore a thin, crude outfit consisting of a large piece of cloth with a hole in the middle for the head, and they looked at me with fear and anxiety in their eyes. What were they so scared about?
“Don’t you understand, Shopmaster?” One slave girl with a defiant look in her eyes stepped forward.
She was maybe a little older than I was. She was a pretty beastman girl with masculine features, triangular ears, and a thick, long, stripped tail. With the thin clothes she had on, I could see she had a shapely figure, too.
“You’re a mystic tanuki?” I asked.
“I’m a raccoon person,” she said, glaring at me.
As a human, I couldn’t tell the difference, but because the mystic tanukis and raccoon people looked similar, they apparently hated being mistaken for the other race.
“S-Sorry…” I said. “You are?”
“Pardon me. I am Sandria the slave.”
“Okay. San, then,” I said. “Nice to meet you.”
“Huh?…Er, right.”
San took the hand I offered her, her eyes wide. I didn’t know what she was so surprised about, but it seemed like she could explain the dour mood here to me.
“San, why is everyone frightened?” I asked.
“Because your grandfather has passed away, Shopmaster,” she said.
“Even though you’re slaves, you’re sad that Grandpa died?” I asked.
“That’s because, compared to other slave traders, your grandfather treated his slaves well.”
According to San, the treatment of slaves differed from trader to trader.
Technically, because the system of economic slaves was in part a system of social welfare to at least keep people from dying, violence and sexual abuse were forbidden. (Though some slaves included the option of sex in order to sell themselves for more than double the price.) However, when it came to how far those rules were respected, or if they were respected at all, that depended largely on the state of public order in the area and their owner’s morals.
For instance, if a female slave was raped by her master, even if she lodged a complaint over it, and even if that noble were punished, because that woman would have no assets, she would ultimately just end up back at the slave trader waiting to be purchased again. That being the case, the woman might think it better to silently endure it. (Unless her life were in danger; that would be another matter entirely.)
In the case of male slaves, they were mostly purchased to be used as manual labor. Even if they were worked until they collapsed, it would be difficult to prove that that was a case of abuse.
In the world of slaves, that sort of darkness ran rampant. The slave traders themselves also came in many shapes and sizes.
Some treated their slaves like animals, not feeding them decent food. They permitted them to wear nothing more than their collars, and on cold nights, they wouldn’t give them even a scrap of cloth as a blanket. Even if their slaves fell sick, they would let the sickness run its course. They had exclusive contracts with nobles with certain proclivities, and no one knew what happened to the women they sent them…
The list went on.
It seemed there were still a large number of slave traders with those sorts of dark rumors swirling around them. It seemed the new king had been alarmed by the current situation, and a number of them had been apprehended, but some were still out there in the rural areas and in the dark places in the cities.
Compared to that, Grandpa had apparently treated his slaves well. They were given clothes to wear, even if the clothes were shabby, and they were fed properly. He didn’t abuse them, and if they fell ill, he looked after them. He also didn’t sell them off to any overly strange customers. It seems he was a decent slave trader.
It seemed Grandpa hadn’t wanted me to find out he was in this line of business, but it wasn’t that far away from the gentle image I’d had of my grandfather, so I was honestly relieved.
“But from everything I’ve heard so far, you had no reason to like him, either, did you?” I asked.
“What he did was good enough for us slaves,” said San. “Because, at the very least, we didn’t have to worry about anything strange and untoward happening to us. However, now, we can no longer be so sure of that.”
“Huh?” I asked.
“Your grandfather said when he was alive that you were unlikely to take over this business, Shopmaster. That this work would be too hard for his timid, much-too-kind grandson.”
Ah… So that was why he never told me, I thought. He probably kept it a secret because he thought the knowledge would eat away at me.
San continued. “However, if you choose not to take over the business, we will all be sold off to other slave traders. There is no trader who could afford to buy all of us at once. We would all be split up. There are slaves among us who are married, or are sisters, but there would be no consideration shown for that. In fact, there is no guarantee that the slave traders who would receive us would be decent like your grandfather was.”
“That’s…”
“Furthermore, there are those with young children among us. The present king, His Majesty King Souma, has forbidden the ownership of slaves under the age of twelve. As such, those children are not slaves, but if the buyers say they only want the parents, those children will be left in an orphanage. This is why we are all sad for the death of your grandfather.”
That made sense. They weren’t sad about Grandpa’s death itself, but for the situation it had left them all in… That was likely it.
I wasn’t a slave. So I couldn’t understand their suffering. Still, not being able to envision a bright future for themselves was, probably, even harder than I’d imagined.
While I was still at a loss for words, San handed me something.
It was a riding crop. While I was wondering why she would give me such a thing, San turned her back to me and suddenly began to take off her clothes. Then, having stripped down to only a single pair of underwear (her top was completely naked), and covering her front with the clothes she had been wearing, she knelt as if in penance. Her smooth back and fluffy tail were exposed to my eyes.
“Wait, San?! What are you doing?!” I shouted.
“I have spoken above my station as a slave. I want you to punish me.”
“But why?!”
“Voicing an opinion to the shopmaster is something no slave should ever do,” San explained. “Even if you were to kill me, or torture me, or sell me to the worst kind of owner for it, I would be in no position to complain. I do not want that. Once you have whipped me in front of everyone, I beg you, please, forgive me.”
“No, that’s not…”
“It will be fine,” San said. “That whip is of a special make. It causes intense pain without wounding the place where it strikes. You will not be lowering my value as merchandise.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about!” I threw the whip to the ground, walked around in front of San, then crouched down to look her in the eye. “Are you some kind of pervert that gets off on being hit, San?”
“…I don’t think of myself as one, at least,” she said.
“Then why did you say that when you knew you might get hit for it?”
When I asked that in as calm a tone as I could manage, San lowered her face. Her bangs fell to cover her face, so I couldn’t see her expression, but there were sobs as she spoke.
“So that even if you do close this store… you might pay the slightest bit of concern to our situations… At the very least, you might look for buyers who will let the families… stay together…”
“Do you have family here, San?” I asked gently.
San shook her head.
She did that it even though she didn’t have any herself…
I looked around at each of the slaves.
There was a woman who was squeezing her child to her breast, looking at me with uncertainty.
There were a pair of two slave girls, both around seventeen years old, who looked like sisters and were holding hands. One girl was quiet, but she seemed to have a mental fortitude (the elder sister?). The other one was trying to act tough, but looked shaken by uncertainty (the little sister?). The quiet girl was holding the other one tightly and trying to reassure her.
Had San put herself in danger for them?
“You take good care of your own, don’t you, San?” I asked.
She said nothing.
“Could you put your clothes back on for now?”
“But…!”
“It’s fine,” I said forcefully.
San reluctantly put her clothes back on. As she did, I noticed something shapely and jiggling for a second, but I looked away with all the strength I had.
Once San had calmed down, I spoke to all of the slaves. “I see your situation. That said, I have no intention of taking over this business. I could never be a slave trader. It just wouldn’t work.”
San said nothing.
“However, I think I will keep this business going until all of you are sold. Of course, I have no intention of selling you to any strange buyers. I will take responsibility for investigating them carefully. As far as I can manage, I’ll look for buyers that will allow families to stay together.”
If I had been rich, I could have closed up shop and released all of them. But, in my current state, I didn’t have the power to. Still, I wanted to do what I could. While the slaves’ faces filled with relief after they heard me speak, I smiled to San who was still in a daze.
“This is the best I can do. Is it good enough?”
“…More than,” she said. “You are too kind for your own good, Shopmaster.”
“Could you not call me that? I’m Ginger Camus.”
“Understood, Master Ginger.”
And so, I gave San a firm handshake.