moved to the corner of his pen to lounge defiantly against the wall. He crossed his arms on his chest and waited for Torg to notice him.
It was surprisingly difficult to stand still and silent and wait for Torg to notice him. Torg was making his way slowly down the opposite row, examining every slave, dickering with the keeper, and then either nodding or shaking his head. The keeper had a tally block he was marking as they came. After a time, it puzzled Wintrow. Torg seemed to be buying a substantial number of slaves, but these were not the artisans and educated slaves that his father had spoken of acquiring.
He watched Torg swagger along, obviously impressed with his own importance as a buyer of human flesh. He strutted for the keeper as if he were a man worth impressing, inspecting the slaves with fine disregard for their dignity or comfort. The longer Wintrow watched him, the more he despised the man. Here, then, was the counterpoint to the slaves' loss of spirit and spark: a man whose self-importance fed on the humiliation and degradation of others.
And yet there was a horrible kernel of fear in Wintrow's waiting, too. What if Torg did not turn and notice him? What then? Would Wintrow abase himself by calling out to the man? Or let him pass by, and face a future full of dealing with other Torgs? Just as Wintrow thought he would cry out, just as he bit down on his own tongue to keep it from betraying him, Torg glanced at him. And away, and then back, as if he could not believe what his eyes had shown him. His eyes widened, and then a grin split his face. He immediately left his task to stride over to Wintrow.
“Well, well,” he exclaimed in vast satisfaction. “I do believe I've earned myself quite a bonus here. Quite a bonus.” His eyes roved up and down Wintrow, taking in the straw clinging to his worn robe, to the shackles around his chafed ankles and his face white with cold. “Well, well,” he repeated. “Doesn't look as if your freedom lasted long, holy boy.”
“Do you know this prisoner?” the keeper demanded as he came to stand beside Torg.
“Indeed I do. His father is… my business partner. He has been wondering where his son disappeared to.”
“Ah. Then it is fortunate for you that you have found him today. Tomorrow, his freedom would have been forfeit for his fine. He would have been tattooed the Satrap's slave, and sold.”
“The Satrap's slave.” The grin came back to Torg's face. His pale eyebrows danced over his gray eyes. “Now, there's an amusing idea.” Wintrow could almost see the slow workings of Torg's brain. “How much is the boy's fine?” he demanded suddenly of the keeper.
The old man consulted a tally cord at his waist. “Twelve bits of silver. He killed one of the Satrap's other slaves, you know.”
“He what?” For a moment Torg looked incredulous. Then he burst out laughing. “Well, I doubt that, but I don't doubt there's quite a tale attached to it. So. If I come back with twelve silver bits tonight, I buy him free. What if I don't?” He narrowed both his eyes and grinned as he asked, more of Wintrow than the keeper, “What would he sell for tomorrow?”
The keeper shrugged. “Whatever he would bring. New slaves are generally auctioned. Sometimes they have friends or family who are willing to buy them free. Or enemies eager to have them as slaves. The auction bidding can be quite fierce. And sometimes amusing as well.” The keeper had seen who had the power and was playing to him. “You could wait it out, and buy him back. Perhaps you'd save a coin or two. Perhaps you'd have to pay more. But he would be marked by then, marked with the Satrap's sigil. You or his father could grant him his freedom after that, of course. But he'd have to have some tattoo from you, and some sort of paper or ring to say he was free.”
“Couldn't we just burn the tattoo off?” Torg asked callously. His eyes devoured Wintrow's face, looking for some kind of fear. Wintrow refused to show any. Torg would never dare to let it go so far. This was but the same kind of mockery and taunting the man always indulged in. If Wintrow gave any sign of being upset by it, Torg would only indulge in more of it. He let his eyes wander past Torg as if he were no longer interested in him or his words.
“Burning off a slave tattoo is illegal,” the keeper pronounced ponderously. “A person with a burn scar to the left of his nose is assumed to be an escaped and dangerous slave. He'd be brought right back here, if he were caught. And tattooed again with the Satrap's sign.”
Torg shook his head woefully, but his grin was evil. “Such a shame, to mark such a sweet little face as that, eh? Well,” he turned abruptly aside from him. With a jerk of his head, he indicated the slaves he had not yet inspected. “Shall we continue?”
The keeper frowned. “Do you want me to send for a runner? To take word of this boy to his father?”
“No, no, don't trouble yourself. I'll see his father hears of his whereabouts. He's not going to be pleased with the boy. Now, what about this woman? Has she any special skill or training?” His voice caressed the last two words, making it a cruel joke on the elderly hag who crouched before them.
Wintrow stood trembling in his pen. The anger he felt inside him threatened to burst him wide open. Torg would leave him here, in cold and filth, for as long as he could. But he'd tell his father, and then come down here with him to witness their confrontation. With a sudden cold sinking of his heart, Wintrow considered how vast his father's anger would be. He'd feel humiliated as well. Kyle Haven did not like to be humiliated. He'd find ways of expressing that to his son. Wintrow leaned against the wall of his pen miserably. He should have just waited and endured. It was less than a year now to his fifteenth birthday. When it came, he would declare himself a man independent of his father's will, and just step off the ship wherever it was. This foolish attempt at running away was only going to make the months stretch longer. Why hadn't he waited? Slowly he sank down to sit in the straw in the corner of his pen. He closed his eyes to sleep. Sleeping was far better than considering his father's anger to come.
“Get out,” Kennit repeated in a low growl. Etta stood where she was, her face pale, her mouth firm. One hand held a basin of water, the other was draped in bandaging.
“I thought a fresh bandage might be more comfortable,” she dared to say. “That one is stiff with dry blood and —”
“Get out!” he roared. She whirled, sloshing water over the rim of the basin and fled. The door of his cabin thudded shut behind her.
He had been awake and clear-headed since early morning, but those were the first words he had spoken to anyone. He had spent most of that time staring at the wall, unable to grasp that his luck had forsaken him. How could this have happened to him? How was it possible for Captain Kennit to suffer this? Well. It was time. Time to see what the bitch had done to him, time to take command again. Time. He braced his fists deep in his bedding and hauled himself upright to a sitting position. When his injured leg dragged against the bedding, the pain was such that he felt ill. A new sweat broke out on him, plastering his stinking nightshirt to his back once more. Time. He grabbed the bedclothes and tore them aside. He looked down at the leg she had ruined.
It was gone.
His nightshirt had been carefully folded and pinned back from it. There were his legs, swarthy and hairy as ever. But the one just stopped short, snubbed off in a dirty brownish wad of bandaging right below his knee. It couldn't be. He reached toward it, but could not touch it. Instead, stupidly, he put his hand on the empty linen where the rest of his leg should have been. As if the fault might have been with his eyes.
He keened, then drew a breath and held it. He would not make another sound. Not one sound. He tried to remember how it had come to this. Why had he ever brought the crazy bitch aboard, why had they been attacking slaveships in the first place? Merchant ships, that was where the money was. And they didn't have a herd of serpents trailing after them, ready to grab a man's leg. This was their fault, Sorcor's and Etta's. But for them, he'd still be a whole man.
Calm. Calm. He had to be calm, he had to think this through. He was trapped here, in this cabin, unable to walk or fight. And Etta and Sorcor were both against him. What he had to figure out now was if they were in league with one another. And why had they done this to him? Why? Did they hope to take the ship from him? He took another breath, tried to organize his thoughts. “Why did she do this to me?” A second thought occurred to him. “Why didn't she just kill me then? Was she afraid my crew would turn on her?” If so, then perhaps she and Sorcor were not in league
“She did it to save your life.” The tiny voice from his wrist was incredulous. “How can you be this way? Don't
