race, there was something the figures all had in common; it looked as if their skin had been scrubbed raw, the lines of their veins left exposed, an abnormal viridescent colour — a fretwork of green cables throbbing against their flesh.
Pushing to his feet, the trader waddled in front of the platform and raised his arms to still the crowd. ‘Quiet now, my lovelies. My last voyage up river has, as you can see, been a fruitful one. But not without risks. It was a fierce expedition, our passage littered with the bodies of a dozen of our best porters. And in the dark heart of the jungle, on the edge of the greenmesh, we lay our ambush; luring two patrols into the pits we dug, dug with these hands …’ He raised his soft white hands, palms out. Whoever had been doing the digging, it hadn’t been the trader; those hands hadn’t raised anything heavier than a fork for a long time.
Amelia looked at the platform with fresh eyes.
‘Now do you see?’ whispered Billy. ‘His “goods” travelled too close to the greenmesh and were absorbed by the Daggish Empire, made slaves within the unity of the hive.’
Amelia felt sick. These trade goods had once been people with families and loved ones. Now what were they? Half-dead wasps waiting at the foot of Rapalaw Junction’s walls for a bargain to be struck.
‘He’s chemically cleansed them of the hive’s control,’ said Billy. ‘What you see up there is what the extrication process leaves. Although truth to tell, everything that made them who they were was scrubbed out of them a lot more assiduously by the Daggish when they were assimilated into the hive.’
‘Do any of you lovelies who have come before me today recognize any of these splendid emancipated souls?’ asked the trader.
‘That one,’ shouted one of the crowd, pointing to the man at the end of the line. ‘He was on a safari that disappeared in the interior two years ago; come up from Middlesteel, I think.’
‘Nobody here willing to pay for him, then?’ The trader looked wistfully around the crowd, noted the silence, then scribbled a note of provenance against the names on his list. Perhaps there would be someone back in the civilized world of Jackals who would pay. Rich enough to hunt thunder lizards, there’d surely be someone with deep pockets at the other end of the river that would want their father or their husband back.
‘What about this one, then?’ said the trader, waving a chubby hand at a dark-haired man standing over six feet tall. ‘One of my porters said they thought he was the pilot on a riverboat from Rapalaw that went missing a while back. An unlucky fellow who sailed too far east and ran into a Daggish seed ship.’
From further back in the crowd came a shriek of recognition, a woman pushing forward with a girl of about twelve hanging onto her coattails. ‘Coll! Coll Ordie, don’t you recognize me? Look — ’ she lifted up her girl so he could see ‘-it’s your little Maddalena. She was only nine when you were taken.’
The ex-slave looked blankly down at the two of them from the platform, his face frozen in an emotionless rictus. Amelia saw the trader’s subtle hand signal, and one of his craynarbians gave the man a prod in the spine with a sharp stick.
‘It’s me,’ coughed the man. ‘I’ve come back.’
Amelia’s eyes narrowed, and Billy gave her hand a warning squeeze. Whatever little was left of these unlucky wretches, the emancipated slaves of the Daggish had been well tutored to say one phrase since being freed. Amelia wagered that with a poke in the back, everyone standing on the platform could repeat that utterance.
‘It warms my heart,’ announced the trader. ‘Oh, it truly does. This, damson, is what makes the dangers and perils of my endeavours worthwhile. This is what I live for. But a river pilot, someone who knows the flows and tricks of the great river Shedarkshe, I cannot let him return back to you as cheaply as I might a mere trapper of hides and furs, oh no. I have to pay for my porters and my soldiers and I have to pay for the families, like yours, left lonely where my brave crew have perished in our sallies against the fierce Daggish. So many mouths that must be fed. Shall we say sixteen guineas for your husband?’
‘Sixteen guineas?’ cried the woman. ‘I should sell my house in the post and still be left five short!’
‘Ah, damson, can there ever be a price put on the return of a father for your beautiful girl? Look at her standing there beside you, weeping. You haven’t seen him for so long, have you, my little lovely? How you must have missed him. And you, damson, as much as you love your little one, you must have grown tired of being asked by her every night, “when will daddy return, when will I see him again?” Repeating the very same thing you must have been thinking yourself as you went to bed alone each evening.’ The trader raised his arms in a magnanimous gesture. ‘But your story has touched me. I shall let him go to you for only thirteen guineas. The price of your house and the good will and merciful coins of your husband’s old friends will carry you that little extra way towards me, I am sure.’
‘It’s me,’ repeated the river pilot after another poke. ‘I’ve come back.’
Shaking and confused, the woman tried to withdraw back to the town through the press of the crowd, her daughter dragged against her will, fighting her mother every step of the way.
‘Ah well,’ laughed the merchant, winking at the men in the crowd after the woman and the girl had gone. ‘Hopefully she’ll come back with the guineas. Of course, sometimes they haven’t been going to bed so alone every night, and then they slip me a guinea or two to apprentice their old man far down river from the trading post.’
Amelia’s hand was shaking above her holster and Billy stopping it from dipping down with an iron grip. ‘Whatever you think of this, these transactions are still legal. The comfort traders operate just the right side of the Suppression of Slavery Act. Murder, however, is punished the same here as back in Jackals. More swiftly, too.’
‘I’ll pay your damn leach’s money,’ shouted Amelia, shrugging off Billy’s hand. ‘Thirteen guineas.’
‘It’s not their husband or father you’re buying back anymore,’ whispered Billy. ‘It won’t be the same for them.’
An image of the half-empty rooms of her old home came to Amelia, waiting for her aunt to turn up while the bailiffs argued with each other over which of the bruisers would get to remove the choicest pieces of furniture, lifting her father’s cheap old oil painting of an imagined Camlantis off the wall and almost coming to blows over it. ‘No, it never is.’
‘
Amelia pointed down the river to where the
‘You should have said so before, my dear lady,’ said the trader. ‘To honour a fellow swashbuckler braving the perils of the great river Shedarkshe is a pleasure, never a pain. For today only I shall extend the offer I made to the wife to you. A mere thirteen guineas, and as a token of my respect you may even keep the cotton breeches and shirt I have supplied this poor emancipated soul with.’
Amelia passed her coins across to one of the trader’s craynarbian guards. ‘Your respect is bought cheaply. Now take him into town and give him back to his family.’
‘That trader respects the Daggish well enough, I think,’ said Billy. ‘As should we, if we are to return from our devil’s errand alive. Getting close enough to the hive to tweak their nose — whether it is by stealing back those taken by the greenmesh, or by probing the ruins of Camlantis left on earth, that’s not something to be taken lightly. If things go badly for us, I have nobody at home waiting to pay a comfort trader’s price for me. I would be better off remaining part of the hive. At least the Daggish feed the slaves they absorb. There’s not many who would be queuing up to hire an old blind man scrubbed clean of his schooling in sonar.’
Amelia looked at the people left standing on the platform, empty vessels trying to remember what it was to be human. The freed slave who had once been a river pilot was being led down the platform. How much comfort had she bought that little girl and her mother? Not nearly enough, Amelia suspected. ‘If it comes to it, Billy, you shoot me rather than let me be taken alive as a slave by the Daggish.’
Suddenly Gabriel McCabe appeared, one of the
Billy Snow recognized the first mate by the weight of his footsteps alone. ‘Gabriel?’
‘Trouble in the town — one of Bull’s people.’
Amelia followed after McCabe as he pelted through Rapalaw’s gates, heading for the main square. At the centre of the town a small brawl had broken out, sailors from the
