witnessed it before but it never ceased to amaze him. Once a person had realized death, if they could turn aside from pain they immediately turned toward wonder and Sa. It took both steps, Wintrow knew that. If a person had not accepted death as a reality, the touch could be refused. Some accepted death and the touch, but could not let go of their pain. They clung to it as a final vestige of life. But Gala had let go easily, so easily that Wintrow knew she had been longing to let go for a long time.
He stood quietly by and did not speak. Nor did he listen to the exact words she spoke to Lem. Tears coursed down Lem's cheeks, over the scars of a hard life and the embedded dyes of his slave tattoo. They dripped from his roughly shaven chin. He said nothing, and Wintrow purposely did not hear the content of Gala's words. He listened to the tone instead and knew that she spoke of love and life and light. Blood still moved in a slow red trickle down her bare leg. He saw her head loll on her shoulder as she weakened, but the smile did not leave her face. She had been closer to death than he had guessed; her stoic demeanor had deceived him. She would be gone soon. He was glad he had been able to offer her and Lem this peaceful parting.
“Hey!” A bat jabbed him in the small of his back. “What are you doing?”
The slave broker gave Wintrow no time to answer. Instead he pushed the boy aside, dealing him a bruising jab to the short ribs as he did so. It knocked the wind out of his lungs and for a moment, all he could do was curl over his offended midsection, gasping. The broker stepped boldly into the midst of his coffle, to snarl at Lem and Gala. “Get away from her,” he spat at Lem. “What are you trying to do, get her pregnant again, right here in the middle of the street? I just got rid of the last one.” Foolishly, he reached to grab Gala's unresisting shoulder. He jerked at the woman but Lem held her fast even as he uttered a roar of outrage. Wintrow would have recoiled from the look in his eyes alone, but the slave broker snapped Lem in the face with the small bat, a practiced, effortless movement. The skin high on Lem's cheek split and blood flowed down his face. “Let go!” the broker commanded him at the same time. Big as the slave was, the sudden blow and pain half-stunned him. The broker snatched Gala from his embrace, and let her fall sprawling into the bloody dirt. She fell bonelessly, wordlessly, and lay where she had bled, staring beatifically up at the sky. Wintrow's experienced eye told him that in reality she saw nothing at all. She had chosen to stop. As he watched, her breath grew shallower and shallower. “Sa's peace to you,” he managed to whisper in a strained voice.
The broker turned on him. “You've killed her, you idiot! She had at least another day's work in her!” He snapped the bat at Wintrow, a sharply stinging blow to the shoulder that broke the skin and bruised the flesh without breaking bones. From the point of his shoulder down, pain flashed through his arm, followed by numbness. Indeed, a well-practiced gesture, some part of him decided as he yelped and sprang back. He stumbled into one of the other hobbled slaves, who pushed him casually aside. They were all closing on the broker and suddenly his nasty little bat looked like a puny and foolish weapon. Wintrow felt his gorge rise; they would beat him to death, they'd jelly his bones.
But the slave broker was an agile little man who loved his work and excelled at it. Lively as a frisking puppy, he spun about and snapped out with his bat, flick, flick, flick. At each blow, his bat found slave flesh, and a man fell back. He was adept at dealing out pain that disabled without damaging. He was not so cautious with Lem, however. The moment the big man moved, he struck him again, a sharp snap of the bat across his belly. Lem folded up over it, his eyes bulging from their sockets.
And meanwhile, in the slavemart, the passing traffic continued. A raised eyebrow or two at this unruly coffle, but what did one expect of map-faces and those who mongered them? Folk stepped well wide of them and continued on their way. No use to call to them for help, to protest he was not a slave. Wintrow doubted that any of them would care.
While Lem gagged up bile, the broker casually unlocked the blood-caked fetters from Gala's ankles. He shook them clear of her dead feet, then glared at Wintrow. “By all rights, I should clap these onto you!” he snarled. “You've cost me a slave, and a day's wages, if I'm not mistaken. And I am not, see, there goes my customer. He'll want nothing to do with this coffle, after they've shown such bad temperament.” He pointed the bat after his fleeing prospect. “Well. No work, no food, my charmers.”
The little man's manner was so acridly pleasant, Wintrow could not believe his ears. “A woman is dead, and it is your fault!” he pointed out to the man. “You poisoned her to shake loose a child, but it killed her as well. Murder twice is upon you!” He tried to rise, but his whole arm was still numb from the earlier blow, as was his belly. He shifted to his knees to try to get up. The little man casually kicked him down again.
“Such words, such words, from such a cream-faced boy! I am shocked, I am. Now I'll take every penny you have, laddie, to pay my damages. Every coin, now, be prompt, don't make me shake it out of you.”
“I have none,” Wintrow told him angrily. “Nor would I give you any I had!”
The man stood over him and poked him with his bat. “Who's your father, then? Someone's going to have to pay.”
“I'm alone,” Wintrow snapped. “No one's going to pay you or your master anything for what I did. I did Sa's work. I did what was right.” He glanced past the man at the coffle of slaves. Those who could stand were getting to their feet. Lem had crawled over by Gala's body. He stared intently into her upturned eyes, as if he could also see what she now beheld.
“Well, well. Right for her may be wrong for you,” the little man pointed out snidely. He spoke briskly, like rattling stones. “You see, in Jamaillia, slaves are not entitled to Sa's comfort. So the Satrap has ruled. If a slave truly had the soul of a man, well, that man would never end up a slave. Sa, in his wisdom, would not allow it. At least, that's how it was explained to me. So. Here I am with one dead slave and no day's work. The Satrap isn't going to like that. Not only are you a killer of his slaves, but a vagrant, too. If you looked like you could do a decent day's work, I'd clap some chains and a tattoo on you right now. Save us all some time. But. A man must work within the law. Ho, guard!” The little man lifted his bat and waved it cheerily at a passing city guard. “Here's one for you. A boy, no family, no coin, and in debt to me for damage to the satrap's slaves. Take him in custody, would you? Here, now! Stop, come back!”
The last exclamation came as Wintrow scrabbled to his feet and darted away from them both. Only Lem's cry of warning made him glance back. He should have ducked instead. The deftly flung spinning club caught him alongside the head and dropped him in the filthy street of the slavemart.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Rain Wild Traders
“Because anything out of the ordinary rattles me, that's why,” grandma snapped.
“I'm sorry,” Malta's mother said in a neutral voice. “I was only asking.” She stood behind Grandmother at her vanity table, pinning up her hair for her. She didn't sound sorry, she sounded weary of Grandma's eternal irritability. Malta didn't blame her. Malta was sick of them both being so crabby. It seemed to her that all they focused on was the sad side of life, the worrying parts. Tonight there was a big gathering of Old Traders and they were taking Malta with them. Malta had spent most of the afternoon arranging her hair and trying on her new robe. But here were her mother and grandmother, just dressing at the last minute, and acting as if the whole thing were some worrisome chore instead of a chance to get out and see people and talk. She just couldn't understand them.
“Are you ready yet?” she nudged them. She didn't want to be the last one to get there. There would be a lot of talking tonight, a Rain Wild and Trader business discussion her mother had said. She couldn't see why her mother and grandmother found that so distressing. No doubt that would be sit-still-and-try-not-to-be-bored time. Malta wanted to arrive while there was still talking and greeting and refreshments being offered. Then maybe she could find Delo and sit with her. It was stupid that it was taking them so long to get ready. They should have each had a servant to assist with dressing hair and laying out garments and all the rest of it. Every other Trader family had such servants. But no, Grandma insisted that they could no longer afford them and Mama had agreed. And when Malta had argued they had made her sit down with a big stack of tally sticks and receipts and try to make sense of them in one of the ledger books. She had muddled the page, and Grandma made her copy it over. And then they had wanted to sit around and talk about what the numbers meant and why the numbers said they couldn't have servants anymore, only Nana and Rache. Malta would be very glad when Papa got back. She was sure there was something they were missing. It made no sense to her. How could they suddenly be poor? Nothing else had changed. Yet there they were, in robes at least two years old, dressing one another's hair and snipping at each
