‘What are you doing here, mountain girl?’ the great man asked in a voice that, for all its roughness, bore a city accent.
‘Looking…for someone — ’ Pryn stammered. It seemed she must answer something. ‘A friend of mine. A woman.’ Later she would think that it was only after she’d started to speak that the image of the tale-teller’s Raven, with her mask and her double blade, leapt into her mind like a protective demon. ‘But she’s not here, and I…’ She looked at the people about the bridge. ‘I was with some men, before; they were looking for someone called the Liberator…a man named Gorgik.’
The big man leaned his head to the side. ‘Were they, now?’ Shaggy brows drew down.
‘They were going to keep me with them at first, because they thought I was a spy. For the Empress. Then they realized how silly that was, and how difficult it would be trying to keep track of me in the city. So they turned me loose.’ She took a breath. ‘But now I don’t know where to go!’ The next thought struck the same way the memory of Raven had a moment back. ‘But I’ve ridden a dragon! My name is Pryn — I can write it, too. I read, and I’ve flown on a dragon’s back above the Faltha mountains!’
The giant grinned. A third of one front tooth had broken off, but the rest were whole enough. ‘You’ve flown on a dragon above the Falthas, over the narrow-minded, provincial Hold of fabled Ellamon…?’ He unfolded gauntleted arms.
Each callused finger, Pryn saw, was thicker than three of hers bunched together. She nodded, more because of his grin and his recognition of her home than for his judgment of it.
‘And did you bring dried dragonfruit to the market and try to sell it there to unwary tourists as eggs of the fabled beasts themselves, you dragon-riding scamp?’ The grin softened to a smile. ‘You see, I have been through your town.’
‘Oh, no!’ Pryn exclaimed. ‘I’d never do that!’ Though she knew of girls and boys who had, she also knew it was precisely these — at least the girls — who ended up imprisoned as grooms in Ellamon’s fabled corrals. ‘If my aunt ever heard I’d done a thing like that, she’d beat me!’
The man laughed. ‘Come with me, mountain girl.’
‘What are you doing here?’ Pryn blurted. Talking had turned out to be easy enough; but the notion of going with the slave frightened her all over again.
The shaggy eyebrows raised. ‘I, too, was looking for…a friend.’
Pryn found herself staring at the collar. Did slaves, she wondered, have friends? Did this slave want to make friends with her?
The man said: ‘But since I’ve found you instead, I’ll put such friendships off for a while.’
‘Are you going to take me to your master?’ Pryn asked.
The giant looked a little surprised. ‘No.’ Then surprise dissolved back into the scarred smile. ‘No, I wasn’t going to do that. I thought we might walk to the other end of the bridge. Then, if there were someplace you wanted to go, I’d take you there. After that, I’ll leave.’
Pryn looked down at the slave’s feet: horny, dirty, cracked at the edge, barred with ligaments under tangled veins, the ankle’s hock blocky beneath the bronze greave. Above bronze, calf hair curled over the chased rim. That’s not a foot, Pryn thought. That’s a ham someone’s halved and flung down on the street! She looked at his chest. On the copper chain hung a bronze disk the size of her palm — really it was several disks, bolted one on top of the other, with much cut away from the forward one, so that there were little shapes all over it with holes at their points; and some kind of etching on the disk beneath…Around the rim were markings in some abstract design. She looked at his belly. It was muscular, hairy, with a lot behind it pushing muscle and hair forward. He wore five or six loose belts, a thick one and a thin one of leather, one of braided rope, one of flattened silver links, and one of ordinary chain. They slanted his hips at different angles. From one hung a wide, shaggy sheath; from another, some kind of purse; attached to another was a net of mail that went between his legs (a few links had broken) to pouch the rougher and darker genital flesh. She looked again at his face.
He had raised his hand to gnaw a thumbnail.
Pryn thought: Is this how people have looked at him when they purchased him at some auction…? Her cheeks and knees suddenly heated.
The scarred face moved toward some question, but he dropped his hand and smiled. ‘Come. Let’s walk.’
And somehow she was walking with him along the bridge.
‘How long have you been here?’ he asked.
‘In the city?’ She looked up. ‘Since this morning.’
‘I thought it couldn’t be longer.’ He chuckled. ‘Do you know where you are?’
‘You mean in Kolhari?’
‘Do you know where in Kolhari you are?’
Pryn looked at the men and women loafing and leaning on the bridge’s low wall. She shook her head.
He pointed with a thick thumb over the side. ‘That muddy ditch there is the Khora Spur. Three-quarters of a mile up, it runs off the Big Khora. Both go down to the sea, to make this neighborhood in front of us into an island in the middle of town. It’s also called the Spur — the oldest and poorest section of the city. Right now it’s mostly inhabited by barbarians, recently from the south. But it tends to house whoever is poor, new, or down on their luck.’
‘Do you and…and your master live there?’
The big man considered a moment. ‘You might say I do,’ which struck Pryn as a complex answer for a simple question. ‘This street here, running across the bridge, is the upper end of New Pavē. It runs back up into the commercial part of the city, crosses Black Avenue, and finally turns along the sea to become part of the Kolhari waterfront. Here, at this end, it’s called Old Pavē. The bridge itself? We call it the Bridge of Lost Desire, though it had another name, officially, thirty years ago, when all of Kolhari was known as Neveryóna; but I don’t remember what it was. The Bridge of Lost Desire is the current one. On it, you’ll find working most of the city’s — ’
Ahead, a man shrieked.
Pryn looked at her companion — who hadn’t looked at all.
When she looked back, though most people had only moved a step or turned by no more than a small angle, the shriek had created a center:
At it, the handsome young man buried bare fingers in black braids to shake the heavy young woman’s head — a red wooden bead broke from its chain, fell to the flags, and rolled.
‘What do you mean…!’ the young man shouted, shaking his jeweled fist about his shoulder. ‘I don’t want to hear that from you! He didn’t give you enough? No, not from you! What do you mean! Tell me! No, I don’t want to hear it…!’ As he shook, the woman seemed intent on keeping her face blank, her arms limp, and her large feet under her.
Suddenly the young man threw her head away, stepping back. ‘You don’t think I’ll do anything to you? You don’t?’ He struck his dirty, ringed fist back against his own chest, grinding. ‘Look — ’ He shoved his hand on past his shoulder; the beautiful features grimaced — ‘if I do that to myself — ’ Points and edges had caught the smooth skin as though it were rough fabric, to tear a two-inch cut, from which blood ran, turning aside at his nipple to dribble down his flank — ‘what do you think I’ll do to you? Look — ’ Suddenly turning, he struck his ringed fist on the arm of the nearest bystander, a boy whose made-up eyes widened as he backed away, blood welling through his fingers where he clutched his arm (someone grabbed the boy and called, ‘Hey, now! What are you doing, now — ! Come on…!’) — ‘if I do that to him — and I don’t even know the little faggot — what do you think I’ll do to you!’ Working himself up, dancing about, the handsome young man suddenly lunged, ringed hand open and falling toward her face —