“Wait,” I grunted. I peered out. No sign of any guards — but the leaping black-and-white shape of a wersting.
He yowled and leaped. Damned intemperate, these hunting dogs. But he did not know me, and so was legally entitled to rip out my throat. I had no business here. I let him have the rapier, but he died shrilling in the wild ululating cry of the wersting.
“Hurry!” I yelled and we belted heads down for the glass-topped wall. A fold of Paline’s dress smothered the sharp edges. I hefted the two girls up, fairly hurling them over to fall shaken and scratched into the bushes on the far side. As I went over I heard an uproar behind me and caught the fiery gleam of torches. More werstings were ululating. I picked myself up, tore down Paline’s dress, all ripped. I thrust the rapier through the dress in two quick passes, cleaned it, and then snapped it back into the scabbard. As I say, I do not like to foul with blood a scabbard Delia has given me. I grabbed the two girls, one under each arm, holding them around their stomachs, their arms and legs dangling, and ran for the shadows of the trees.
As my clansmen of Segesthes say: “In for a zorca, in for a vove.” Rosala knew who I was, despite the mask. She had no business wedding old Casmas, anyway. I collected up my clothes and we bundled off into the dark streets of the golden quarter, hurrying up the tree-lined avenues, going through the narrow lanes of the Horters’ quarter, passing right by
No sign of pursuit developed. I own I felt relief that I did not have to kill one of Rosala’s family. As I have indicated, I had shifted billets from the first inn I had patronized here, finding one in a narrower alley, with a convenient tree growing up giving me a quick passage from the adjoining roof. This inn was called
I hefted the girls up by their rumps, slid them along the tree branch, ignoring their squeaks, maneuvered them down onto my balcony. The window opened as Paline landed, and Nulty took her into his embrace, very familiarly, I thought, and dragged her inside. I pushed Rosala through and slammed the window and the shutters — and we had done it!
Rosala of Match Urt would demand explanations, and I was not prepared to give them. I fobbed her off with as little information as I could; the problem remained. What was to be done with her and her maid?
If I felt that chance owed me some recompense, I do not think that was an unreasonable attitude. Chance and my own stupid cleverness had brought me into my present position, and chance must have relented, at least in the matter of Rosala.
With the girls safely hidden in the next room, and Emin and Salima sworn to secrecy, a secrecy I felt confident they would maintain, for as much as I would trust anyone in their position I trusted them, we were in fit state to receive Chido on his morning call. The duel and its aftermath had left him with a fragile head, but a dish of palines soon cured him. We settled that we would walk out, and he told me he was in need of a new slave, for he had freed his slave of the zorcas, and was thus perfectly handicapped, dear fellow, in the zorca races.
I gave Chido this, that he had freed the slave on good terms, giving him enough so that he was able to live comfortably as a clum. What his descendants might do was another matter, a problem of the clums. The various slave markets throughout the city always repelled me. They held an undeniable fascination, of course, but you know my view on slavery. We strolled down there, and only because, having taken this fresh hitch upon fate, and having decided that the next person who tried to insult or put down Hamun ham Farthytu, the Amak of Paline Valley, would get a bloody nose and a challenge and six inches of honed steel, I was persuaded to venture into haunts where unpleasant characters made it a habit to go for their morning refreshment.
Long terraces set with tables and chairs overlooked the central area, where buyers might stand to make their bids. Water was continuously sprinkled, but as seems always the way with a slave market, dust puffed beneath the feet of the eager buyers. On the stone platform at the far end, with steps leading on and off, and the barracoons in the rear, the miserable bundles of humanity were paraded up and made to strip, clanking in their chains. Bidding was brisk. There are various slave markets, of course, catering for different qualifications in slaves. The simple laboring slaves were something of a glut on the market, what with the prisoners the war was bringing in, despite the huge numbers sacrificed in the Arena. This market dealt usually in skilled slaves, of the kind Chido needed as a zorcaman, a task that is nowise as simple as it sounds.
We sat down on the terrace, out of the blaze of the suns, and watched the proceedings. The auctioneers took turns. They seemed always to be big broad men, able to crack a whip with a cannon-shot report, able to size up the points of their merchandise in just the right, honeyed words to bring the bids rolling in. And, too, they were honest with it. One husky-looking Bleg, with his batlike face hideous in the suns-shine, was revealed as having a broken and badly set leg, and his value came down accordingly. I suppose slaving is like anything else; once you acquire a bad name no one will trust your goods. Tothord of the Ruby Hills was there, sipping a light forenoon yellow wine, and eating a luscious gregarian mousse between sips. “What diff do you fancy, then, Chido?”
“Apim, if possible. But I do not mind too much. I don’t think I could stand the smell of a Rapa, though, by Krun!”
“They don’t smell so bad once you get used to them,” I said.
Chido grimaced. “If you ever can!”
All the slaves being put up, either singly or in teams, were male. Some of them were very valuable, skilled men. All had been tamed — or almost all. .
In the dust of the bidding area, a kind of arena of acquisition, most of the bidders wore a fold of their scarf flung across their mouths and nostrils. Obeying Chido’s injunction, I had come with an orange scarf carelessly thrown over my shoulders, ready for when he dragged me down into the dust. He watched the slaves as they were put up, his young eyes shrewd. He was no fool when it came to slaves. Why, except by the actions of chance, had I happened to pick up an orange scarf, when Nulty had handed me a green one?
Suddenly Chido stiffened like a ponsho-trag on the scent of a stray. “That’s my fellow!” he said decisively.
The slave was a brown-haired, well-built intelligent-looking young apim. The auctioneer bellowed that he had been captured in a raid in Pandahem, that he had been a member of a Lomian zorca patrol. Chido rushed off down the wooden steps from the cool terrace into the dust of shouting men, waving his arms, already bawling out ten deldys as a starter. I followed reluctantly.
“Twelve deldys!” bellowed a Lamnia close by. “Fifteen!” screeched Chido. At a guess a smart zorca handler would be worth twenty-five. Prices fluctuated wildly, of course. The price rose. I was attracted by the novel sight of an auctioneer abruptly catapulting from the curtains at the back of the podium concealing the gates to the cages. The auctioneer was a big fellow; his whip was wrapped around his neck and he fairly flew through the air. He landed with a crash, and his personal slaves picked him up and dusted him off and hustled him back. I heard yells behind the curtain.
“Twenty!” bellowed the Lamnia. These golden-furred halflings are shrewd merchants, and I knew he’d work it so that his final bid was twenty-five or so, thus forcing Chido, if he wanted the slave, to pay over the odds. And so it fell out. Chido yelped: “Twenty-three!” The Lamnia, dusting his fur, said,
“Twenty-five,” and Chido was left holding the sticky end.
“By Krun!” he said. “I’ve set my heart on that fellow!” And, with a loud roar, he hollered, “Twenty-six!”
The apim zorca handler was knocked down to Chido. He pushed his way through to pay at the raised desk where a Relt, one of those gentle cousins of the fierce Rapas, took the money. I was looking after Chido, and sighing, and thinking dark thoughts about slavery, when a massive booming voice burst through the tumult. I heard it distinctly.
“Notor Prescot! Majister!”
I felt as though a whip had scorched my spine.
I looked toward the dais. Guards were holding down a giant of a man whose four arms flailed their chains about, whose fierce red haired head glared intolerantly on the rabble. He saw me, he saw the way my hand flashed instantly to my lips, and he nodded. His bellowings ceased. At once, he became docile. A Djang!
And I–I, Dray Prescot, was the king of the Djangs!
Without a second’s hesitation, I saw it all clearly.
A stout apim in a green cummerbund bid twelve deldys.
