Sitting on steps leading up to another street, beggars argued loudly. One was missing an arm and an ear; among them a woman, with a crutch under one shoulder, its splintered end protruding over the stone step’s edge, complained about a jar of wine she had stolen from the dried-up earthworm of an innkeeper. It had been bad, but she had drunk it anyway and gotten sick and lain — sick — in the street three days. The stump of her missing leg was crusted with scab.
Pryn hurried by.
On Pryn’s right lay a littered yard between three cracked and yellow buildings. In the middle was a circular stone wall, waist high, long boards over its top. It was about three meters across. Pryn walked up to the enclosure and looked down through the strip of black between the weathered planks. Below, a dark head moved to blot a strip of reflected sky.
Again she turned down the street.
Buildings ended; Pryn looked across to an embankment. The bridge entrance had waist-high stone walls either side. A tall woman at the corner newel was fastening a white damasked collar, sewn with metallic threads and set with jewels. It was one of the decorative collar-covers house slaves in wealthier families sometimes used to hide the ugly iron band all slaves wore by law. Having trouble with the clasp, however, the woman removed the cloth to shake it out. Her long neck was bare. She raised the collar-cover again.
The clasp caught — as halfway over the bridge someone hailed her. Along the bridge’s walkway, in colorful robes and veils (many with painted eyes), young women and men stood, leaned, talked, stared, or ambled slowly.
The woman with the collar-cover ran to grab the arm of the heavy, hairy man who’d called. He wore a helmet like the ones Pryn had seen outside the Liberator’s headquarters.
Watching them stroll away, Pryn crossed to the bridge. She reached the post where the woman had stood, put her hand on it, and looked over the stone rail.
Green water glimmered around moss-blotched rocks, clotted with wood, fruit rinds, broken pottery. Some barbarian children climbed out by the carved stanchion stones. Behind her she heard:
‘Twenty!’
‘Five — ’
‘Nineteen!’
‘Five!’
‘Eighteen?’
‘Five, I say!’
‘Seventeen!’
‘All right, eight!’
Pryn looked up. Coming forward through the loiterers was a portly, middle-aged man in a smart toga with red ribbon woven about the white sleeves, neck, and hem. His hand held the shoulder of a naked, green-eyed, barbarian boy, a year or so younger than Pryn. The boy was arguing in his odd southern accent and gesticulating with one closed fist and one open hand: ‘You give me sixteen? I go with you and do it for sixteen! All right? You give me sixteen, then!’
‘Ten!’
‘Sixteen!’
‘Ten!’
‘Sixteen!’
‘Oh, eleven!’
‘No, sixteen!’
‘Sixteen for a dirty little weasel like you?’ returned the man with a grin. ‘For sixteen, I should have you and your three brothers. I’ll give you twelve!’
‘You give me fifteen!’ the barbarian said. ‘You want my brother? Maybe we go find him and he come too. But he don’t do anything, you know? He just watch. For fifteen I go get my brother and — ’
‘Now what would I want with two of you!’ The man laughed. ‘One of you is bad enough. I’ll take you by yourself, and maybe I’ll give you twelve…’
A black man in a long skirt led a camel up over the bridge. The high humps, rocking gait, and clopping hooves made the loiterers smile. The creature had just soiled herself and suddenly decided to switch her tail —
Pryn herself flinched, though no drop struck.
But the man snatched his hand from the boy’s shoulder and rubbed the flat of his palm, now against his gray beard, now against his splattered shoulder, sucking his teeth and shaking his head.
The young barbarian cackled. ‘Now who’s dirty, old turd-nose! You smell like camel pee!’ With a disgusted wave he stalked off over the walkway.
The portly gentleman looked up from his scrubbing, saw the boy leaving, and hurried after. ‘Thirteen! I’ll give you thirteen, but no more!’
Which halted the boy at the stone rail. ‘Will you give me fourteen? You give me fourteen, and I’ll…’
Pryn looked over at the water below. Two women, a soldier between, made their way over the rocks. Just before they went under the bridge, the heftier woman, red wooden beads chained through her black braids, began to pull away; the soldier kept pulling her back. Pryn tried to hear their altercation, but though their heads were only fifteen feet below, from the angle and the children’s shoutings echoing beneath, she could not make it out. She leaned, she listened, wondering what she might do if one of them looked up to see their incomprehensible quarrel observed —
‘What — !’ came an agitated voice behind her. ‘You again…’
Pryn stood and turned, slowly so as not to look particularly interested in what might be going on —
A huge man stood directly behind her, heavily veined arms folded high on his stomach. He wore bronze gauntlets, dark with verdigris and busy with relief. On his chest hung a copper chain.
‘I saw her first — not you!’ the voice came on — not the giant’s. ‘Get away and leave her, now. She’s not to your taste anyway! Don’t you think all of us around here have seen you enough to know what you’re after?’
The giant had a scar down one cheek. Rough hair, some salted white, made a thick, clublike braid over one ear — only it had come half undone. Rough hair shook in the breeze.
Arms still folded, the giant turned his head a little —
‘Now go on! Go on, I say! She’s no good to you! The young ones need my guidance if they’re to make a living here.’ The man talking so excitedly stood a few steps off, shaking a finger at the giant. ‘Go on, now! Why do you stay? Go!’
And Pryn thought: How handsome he is!
The young man’s eyes, blinking between black lashes, looked startlingly blue. But his skin was as dark as Pryn’s or the giant’s beside her, so that she was not sure, really, if he were barbarian or citizen. He wore only a loincloth, with the thinnest blade at his chain belt. His arms were brown and lithe. ‘You don’t need her!’ he continued his complaint. ‘I do! Come on, now. Give her to me!’ On his extended hand he wore many, many rings, two, three, or more on a finger — even two on his thumb. (The fist by his hip was bare.) Stones and metal flashed in the sun, so that it took Pryn moments to register the hands themselves: the skin was gritty and gray. Below the jeweled freight, his nails, overlong at the ends of long, long fingers, were fouled spikes, as if he’d been down playing like a child in the clotted river’s sludge.
Arms still folded, the giant turned his head a little more —
The handsome young man with the beautiful rings and filthy fingers actually jumped. Then he scowled, spat on the flags, turned, and stalked off along the bridge, where a number of loungers and loiterers were still laughing over the camel.
Pryn looked up as the giant turned back to her. In surprise, she swallowed.
Around the giant’s tree-trunk of a neck was a hinged iron collar.
Pryn had always regarded slavers with fear. Perhaps that fear had spread to the notion of slaves themselves. She knew great families sometimes had them. She had seen slaves in the Ellamon market and more recently on the road. But she had never talked to one, nor had she ever heard of anyone who had. To be standing in a strange city, facing one directly — and such a big one! It was quite as frightening as if she were being appraised by a slaver herself!