Twenty-Nine looked down the pier and saw that two other ships were also docked quietly along its length. They floated there gently, their graceful lines and somehow comfortingly creaking hulls belying their horrific, inhuman purpose. Their waterlines rode high in the sea, revealing that their human cargoes had already been ordered ashore.
Twenty-Nine lowered his head in shame. Averting his eyes from his soiled loincloth, he regarded his tortured, shackled hands. Once beautiful, they had easily commanded the highest of compensation for his chosen trade of weapon making. Now they were bloodied and broken, and he doubted they could ever demand such sums again, even if somehow given the chance. Painfully, he tried to straighten out his fingers, but they stubbornly refused to obey, as if they had become appendages belonging to someone else. As they defiantly clung to the shape of the oar handle, he suddenly realized that even though he no longer held the oar, its mastery of him might remain a part of his being forever. Raising his face back up to the strange subterranean harbor and the wailing of his fellow innocents, he felt tears come to his eyes.
It was while standing there, waiting his turn to walk down the gangplank, that Twenty-Nine first noticed the slave directly to his right.
The man was very tall, and unlike most of the other slaves, he somehow stood defiantly erect. Broad-shouldered and stocky, the man was heavily muscled, making it clear that he was quite used to manual labor. The level, intelligent-looking eyes were hazel. Smooth, sandy-colored hair was tied behind his neck with a short strip of leather and fell long down his back. A dark mole lay at the left-hand corner of the man's mouth. Although not what many would call classically handsome, the slave carried with him a great sense of strength and personal fortitude. He looked to be approximately thirty-five Seasons of New Life.
On the man's shoulder Twenty-Nine could easily see the still angry, partially healed brand R'talis.
All the captives grouped with this man had been branded with the same word, Twenty-Nine noticed. He also quickly realized that this particular group of men and women was noticeably smaller than the others, almost as if they had been singled out for some reason.
Just then the cat-o'-nine-tails came whistling out of nowhere.
The knotted strands of leather lashed into Twenty-Nine's naked back. He screamed, falling to the pier. For the briefest of moments he looked up, fire in his eyes, his anger tempting him to lash out at his attacker. Taking a breath, he wisely relented.
The bleeder responsible grabbed him by his dark hair and wrestled him to his feet. Twenty-Nine suddenly realized why he had been whipped. In his examination of the slave standing next to him, he hadn't kept up with the moving line.
The bleeder struck him in the back, forcing him to close ranks. As if understanding, the slave he had been regarding turned his face to him and gave him a nod. Through his pain, Twenty-Nine tried to manage a little smile back.
Reaching the Defiant's gunwales, they began marching down the gangplanks and onto the stone pier. After what seemed an eternity, he finally took his turn at the tables where the men in the hooded blue robes sat waiting. He could now see that the robed ones were seated in dozens of pairs, one pair before each line of disembarking slaves. Twenty-Nine faced the pair in front of him, and they looked up at him disinterestedly.
"Turn to the right," one of them said. Twenty-Nine did so.
"Talis," the other one said, looking at the brand on his shoulder. "Your number?"
"Twenty-Nine."
Refilling his quill with ink, the man scribbled something in his ledger.
"And your given name and house?" the man asked. As Twenty-Nine told him, he again wrote in the book.
"Hold out your right hand," the other one said flatly. Looking around, Twenty-Nine tentatively did so.
One of the seated men narrowed his eyes, and a strange blue glow began to surround Twenty-Nine's tortured hand. Startled, he tried to pull it away. But then the bleeder assigned to these two robed men grabbed his wrist, forcing it back into position over the tabletop. A small, almost painless incision somehow formed in his fingertip. Then a single, controlled drop of his red blood obediently plopped down onto a sheet of parchment lying on the table. As the glow around his hand dissipated, the bleeder let Twenty-Nine's wrist go.
Then one of the men picked up a small vial and poured a single drop of what looked to be red water from it. The drop of water also landed upon the parchment, a short distance away from Twenty-Nine's blood. Leaning over, the two men at the table watched closely as Twenty-Nine's blood drop on the parchment began to dry up. He looked back up at them.
"Lack of blood activity confirmed," one of them said perfunctorily, again writing in his ledger. "Talis. No blood assay or Forestallment map required."
The man next to him reached over to a large pile of books. Selecting one, he rifled through its pages.
"Talis section," he said, looking up at the bleeder. A notation was made in this book, as well.
Ready to escort him away, the bleeder took Twenty-Nine by the arms.
But before the bleeder could push him into motion, a loud hubbub started to come from the line to Twenty-Nine's right. The man he had been studying earlier was standing before another pair of robed men. They seemed very excited, and their voices were rising in volume. Even the bleeder holding Twenty-Nine and the robed ones seated at the desk before him stopped their duties to listen.
"Say your name again!" one of the agitated blue-robes shouted at the slave. "And your house!" It was clear he was extremely eager to have his answer.
The man looked at them with defiance. "I already told you," he said. "I am Wulfgar, of the House of Merrick; son of Jason and Selene. What do you want of me?"
One of the robed men before him looked up to the bleeder stationed by his side. "Take his wrist," he ordered. The bleeder obeyed.
The robed one seated on the right looked back up into the man's eyes. "This will not hurt," he said softly. Twenty-Nine was surprised by his sudden change in tone.
Almost immediately an azure glow formed around the slave's hand. An incision similar to the one created in Twenty-Nine's finger opened. A single drop of his blood fell softly onto the blank parchment lying on the table.
Then the two robed men did something curious.
From a leather case, one of them produced a strange-looking object-actually two objects, housed side by side in some kind of open frame, Twenty-Nine soon realized. One of them appeared to be a clear beaker, the other an hourglass. Both were small in size.
The beaker contained a small quantity of thick, red fluid that seemed to move about inside it in little waves, as if it had a life of its own. At the bottom of the beaker was a small spigot.
The hourglass was the smallest Twenty-Nine had ever seen. Its lower, teardrop-shaped globe contained what looked to be no more than a dozen small black spheres. Looking closer, he couldn't possibly imagine why one would need to measure the extremely limited period of time such a small amount of sand would allow.
The beaker and the hourglass were fastened upright, side by side, in a simple frame of wood without front or back panels.
One of the blue-robes very carefully moved the device into place on the blank sheet of parchment. By now everyone in the immediate vicinity-slaves, bleeders, and hooded ones alike-had become very still, wondering what would happen next.
Slowly, carefully, the man slid the odd device across the parchment, bringing it to rest near the blood drop. The beaker was nearest the blood, the hourglass positioned on the opposite side.