But the slaver was not finished. He drew his sword. “You want to see the captain?” he said. Daly had not been master of a ship for fifteen years, but he still favored the title. The slaver grinned at Doro, showing a scattering of yellow teeth. “You’ll see him soon enough!”
Dore, glanced at the sword, annoyed. In a single movement almost too swift to follow, he raised his heavy machete and knocked the lighter weapon from the slaver’s hand.
Then the machete was at the man’s throat. “That could have been your hand,” Doro said softly. “It could have been your head.”
“My people would kill you where you stand.”
“What good would that do you?in hell?”
Silence.
“Turn, and we’ll go to see Daly.”
The slaver obeyed hesitantly, muttering some obscenity about Doro’s ancestry.
“Another word will cost you your head,” Doro said.
Again, there was silence.
The three marched single file past the chained slaves, past the fire where the branding had stopped, past Daly’s men who stared at them. They went to the tree-shaded, three-sided shelter where Daly sat on a wooden crate, drinking from an earthen jug. He lowered the jug, though, to stare at Doro and Anyanwu.
“I see business is good,” Doro said.
Daly stood up. He was short and square and sunburned and unshaven. “Speak again,” he growled. “Who are you?” He was a little hard of hearing, but Doro thought he had heard enough. Doro could see in him the strange combination of apprehension and anticipation that Doro had come to expect from his people. He knew when they greeted him this way that they were still his servants, loyal and tame.
“You know me,” he said.
The slaver took a step back.
“I’ve left your man alive,” Doro said. “Teach him manners.”
“I will.” He waved the confused, angry man away. The man glared at Doro and at the now lowered machete. Finally, he stalked away.
When he was gone, Doro asked Daly, “Has my crew been here?”
“More than once,” the slaver said. “Just yesterday, your son Lale chose two men and three women. Strong young blacks they were?worth much more than I charged.”
“I’ll soon see,” Doro said.
Suddenly Anyanwu screamed.
Doro glanced at her quickly to see that she was not being molested. Then he kept his eyes on Daly and on his men. “Woman, you will cause me to make a mistake!” he muttered.
“It is Okoye,” she whispered. “The son of my youngest daughter. These men must have raided her village.”
“Where is he?”
“There!” She gestured toward a young man who had just been branded. He lay on the ground dirty, winded, and bruised from his struggles to escape the hot iron.
“I will go to him,” Anyanwu said softly, “though he will not know me.”
“Go,” Doro told her. Then he switched back to English. “I may have more business for you, Daly. That boy.”
“But … that one is taken. A company ship?”
“A pity,” Doro said. “The profit will not be yours then.”
The man raised his stump to rub his hairy chin. “What are you offering?” It was his habit to supplement his meager salary by trading with interlopers?non-Company men?like Doro. Especially Doro. It was a dangerous business, but England was far away and he was not likely to be caught.
“One moment,” Doro told him, then switched language. “Anyanwu, is the boy alone or are there other members of your family here?”
“He is alone. The others have been taken away.”
“When?”
She spoke briefly with her grandson, then faced Doro again. “The last ones were sold to white men many days ago.”
Doro sighed. That was that, then. The boy’s relatives, strangers to him, were even more completely lost than the people of his seed village. He turned and made Daly an offer for the boy?an offer that caused the slaver to lick his lips. He would give up the boy without coercion and find some replacement for whoever had bought him. The blackened, cooked gouge on the boy’s breast had become meaningless. “Unchain him,” Doro ordered.
Daly gestured to one of his men, and that man removed the chains.
“I’ll send one of my men back with the money,” Doro promised.
Daly shook his head and stepped out of the shelter. “I’ll walk with you,” he said. “It isn’t far. One of your people might shoot you if they see you looking that way with only two more blacks as companions.”
