“The Collector?” I asked. “What’s that?”
“Not what. Who. His name is Pontius Aquila.” She pointed with one gnarled finger at a man with sharp features and silvering hair seated in the second row of the stands. He sat beneath a fringed shade, tended to by an oiled, muscular slave. Aquila’s robes were also fringed and banded with a purple stripe. He glared above the heads of the audience as if their presence were not worth acknowledging.
“He’s a politician with a fancy title, the so-called Tribune of the Plebs, but he’s as base as they come.” She snorted. “No manners, and rich off other people’s money. But he knows a valuable piece of flesh when he sees it. And he’ll stop at nothing to add to his collection once he does. I’ve seen his bullyboys start brawls at the auctions if he’s outbid.”
I only understood half of what she was saying and couldn’t tell if it was truth or just gossip. But my stomach turned queasy at the thought of a man like that haggling over the price of my life. Not that there was anything I could do about it in that moment. As the audience settled themselves, a portly man wearing an outlandish wig of bright orange curls and a voluminous robe stepped forward onto the stage.
“Citizens!” he boomed. “Gather and feast your eyes on this banquet of flesh and fancies! Premium lads and lasses from all corners of the known world.”
He prattled on and on, his speech flowery and rapid-fire as he luridly described his wares—us. Eventually, I tuned out the auctioneer and concentrated instead on watching the parade of slaves and the crowd of wealthy Romans who sought to buy them.
The orange-wigged auctioneer skillfully badgered and cajoled the crowd into bidding higher and higher sums for each new slave as Charon himself wandered among the patrons, chatting amiably, extolling the virtues of his wares alongside the whistles and bids from buyers and catcalls from onlookers standing at the fringes of the crowd. If Gruoch’s satisfied muttering was to be believed, they all sold for more than the asking price. Charon had clearly seen something in each one of us that I hadn’t.
I wondered what he’d seen in me.
The dark-haired girl—the one who’d told me she’d been a slave all her life and preferred it to a life of uncertainty—surprised me most of all. She’d been kind to me, and I don’t know why, but that made it a shock to discover that, according to the auctioneer’s leering patter, she’d actually been raised in a preeminent whorehouse in western Gaul.
The Cantii, like most of the tribes of Prydain, had always kept slaves. We bought and sold them the same way as we did our cattle. Slaves had meant swept floors and lit fires and clean water carried in heavy clay pots. I was ashamed to admit I had never given them much thought. They just . . . were. I had been so very blind. And stupid. And now I was learning what it was like to have someone else decide my fate.
I’d been right that night in ruined Alesia. The dark-haired girl was stronger than me. I watched as she took control of her own auction, posing for the crowd and driving the bids ever higher. After fetching a very good sum, she was led away to a cart where an ample-bosomed brothel owner waited, dripping with gold. She held her head high as she went.
The crowd whistled and cheered.
But the show wasn’t quite over yet. The ranks of Charon’s stock were thinning, and there weren’t more than a handful of us left. Then suddenly Gruoch was prodding me in the ribs with her willow switch, and Elka had gone pale as frost on a winter pond. They were sending us out together.
But first, Hafgan stepped forward and, with grim amusement glinting in his mismatched eyes, knelt down in front of us. Before we knew what he was doing, he had clamped a short chain around our ankles, tethering us together just like before. Elka and I exchanged a confused glance. None of the others had been treated like this so far.
With a grunt, Hafgan pushed us out onto the stage. Once we’d shuffled out onto the platform, I was paralyzed with fear. I couldn’t see faces. I could only see shapes. Colors. The sheen of the gold dust that painted my limbs sparked fire at the edges of my vision, and I thought I might pass out.
“Behold these marvelous daughters of Minerva!” the auctioneer bellowed.
I closed my eyes and waited for the bids to start coming in, wondering bitterly what paltry sum I would fetch. I was no healer nor body servant. I had no exceptional skills in this strange world.