The auctioneer’s voice boomed out over the amphitheater: “Lot six this morning is a fine specimen. What will I hear for this human Doltari male?? He’s a trained musician with an excellent singing voice. Just sixteen years old. Look at that golden hair, those blue eyes, those handsome features. Why, this one might even have vané blood in him! He’ll make a welcome addition to any household, but he’s not gelded, so don’t buy him to guard your harem, ladies and gentlemen!” The auctioneer waved his finger with a sly grin, and was answered with a few disinterested chuckles. “Opening bid is ten thousand ords.”
Several members of the audience sniggered at the price.
It was too much.
I didn’t look any prize that day. The Kishna-Farriga slave masters had bathed me but the scrubbing only made the raw whip wounds on my back stand out in angry red stripes. Copper bangles on my wrists did a poor job of camouflaging sores from long months spent in chains. The friction blisters on my left ankle were swollen, infected, and oozing. Bruises and welts covered me: all the marks of a defiant slave. My body shook from hunger and a growing fever. I wasn’t worth ten thousand ords. I wasn’t worth one hundred ords.
Honestly, I wouldn’t have bought me.
“Ah, now don’t be like that, my fine people! I know what he looks like, but I promise you, he’s a rough diamond who only needs polish to shine. He’ll be no trouble either—see, I hold his gaesh in my hand! Won’t someone here pay ten thousand ords for the gaesh of this handsome young slave?” The auctioneer held out his arm and revealed a tarnished silver chain, from which dangled something that glittered and caught in the sun.
The crowd couldn’t see the details, but I knew what he held: a silver hawk, stained black from salt air. A part of my soul, trapped in metal: my gaesh.
He was right: I would cause no more trouble. Never again. Controlling a slave via a gaesh is as effective as it is terrible. A witch had summoned a demon, and that demon had ripped part of my soul away, transferring that essence to the cheap tourist bauble the auctioneer now held in his hand. Anyone who carried that damn gaesh charm could command me to do anything they desired. Anything. If I ignored those orders, my reward would be my agonizing death. I would do anything that the holder of my gaesh asked of me, no matter how objectionable, no matter how repugnant.
Obey or die. There was no choice.
No, my body may not have been worth much, but in Kishna-Farriga the going price for a man’s soul is ten thousand ords.
The crowd stirred and looked at me with new eyes. A troublemaking teenage boy was one thing. A teenage boy who could be healed and perfumed, forced to obey every whim his owner might command, was quite another. I shivered, and it had nothing to do with the warm breeze that prickled the hairs on my skin.
It was a fine day for a slave auction, if you’re into that sort of thing. The weather was hot, sunny, and the air tinged with the stink of gutted harbor fish. Paper umbrellas or canvas awnings obscured the bidders as they lounged on cushioned seats.
Kishna-Farriga was one of the Free States, border city-states that owed no fealty to their neighbors but relied on shifting political tensions* to keep themselves off anyone’s leash. Countries who didn’t want to deal with each other used Kishna-Farriga as a halfway entrep?t for trade goods and commodities—commodities that included slaves such as myself.
Personally, I was used to the slave markets of the Quuros Octagon, with its endless mazes of private chambers and auction theaters. The slave pits in Kishna-Farriga weren’t so elaborate. They used just one open-air stone amphitheater, built next to the famous harbor. At maximum capacity, the rising stone steps seated three thousand people. A slave might arrive by ship, visit the holding cells underneath the amphitheater, and leave with a new owner the same day—all without clearing the smell of dead fish from their nose.
It was all quite charming.
The auctioneer continued to speak. “Do I hear ten thousand?”
Reassured that I was tame, a velvet-clad woman of obvious “professional” talent raised her hand. I winced. I had no desire to go back to a brothel. A part of me feared it would go this way. I was by no means homely, and few are those who can afford the price of a gaeshed slave, without means of recouping their cost.
“Ten thousand. Very good. Do I hear fifteen thousand?”
A rich, fat merchant leered at me from the second row and raised a little red flag to signal his interest. Truth be told, he raised all kinds of red flags. His ownership would be no better than the whorehouse madam’s, and possibly quite worse, no matter what my value.
“Fifteen thousand? Do I hear twenty thousand?”
A man in the front row raised his hand.
“Twenty thousand. Very good, Lord Var.”*
Lord Var? Where had I heard that name?
My gaze lingered on the man. He appeared ordinary: of medium height and weight, nondescript but pleasant, his dress stylish but not extravagant. He had black hair and olive-brown skin—typical of Quuros from west of the Dragonspires—but his boots were the high, hard style favored by Easterners. Jorat, perhaps, or Yor. In addition, he wore a shirt of the Marakor style rather than an Eamithon misha or usigi wrap.
No sword.
No obvious weapon of any kind.
The only remarkable qualities about Lord Var were his confidence, his poise, and the fact the auctioneer recognized him. Var didn’t seem interested in me. His attention focused on the auctioneer; he barely glanced at me. He might as well have been bidding on a set of tin plates.
I looked closer. No protection, hidden or otherwise, and not even a dagger in one of those unpolished leather boots. Yet he sat in the front. No one crowded him, though I’d spotted plenty of pickpockets working the crowd.
I’d never been to Kishna-Farriga before, but I didn’t have to be a native to know only a fool came to this auction house without bodyguards.
I shook my head. It was hard to concentrate. Everything was noise, flashing light, and waves of cold—which I suspected were from a fever. One of my cuts had become infected. Something would need to be done about that soon, or I would be the most expensive paperweight some poor gull had ever purchased.
Focus. I ignored the crowds, the bidding, and the reality of my situation as I slipped the First Veil from my eyes and looked at him again.
I’ve always been skilled at seeing past the First Veil. I had once thought this talent would be my redemption from the Capital City’s slums, back when I was na?ve enough to think there was no fate worse than poverty.