Page 157

Wintrow scarcely felt the blow or heard the words.

All he had eyes for was his father’s face, looking up at him.

He seemed so small and far away in that sea of faces.

In the gathering dark, Wintrow could not be sure of his expression.

He stared down at his father and prayed to Sa.

Neither his mind nor his lips shaped any words; it was a simple plea for mercy.

He saw his father turn to Torg for a hasty conference of some sort.

He wondered if, this late in the day, his father had money left to spend.

But he must, or he would have taken what he’d bought and gone back to the ship.

Wintrow tried to smile hopefully, but could not quite remember how.

What was his father feeling just now? Anger, relief, shame, pity?

It didn’t matter, Wintrow decided. His father could not look at him and not buy him.

Could he? After all, what would his mother say?

Nothing, if she wasn’t told, Wintrow suddenly realized. Nothing at all, if all she knew was that her son had run away in Jamaillia City.

The auctioneer’s lash slapped the table in front of him.

‘Sold!’ he roared out. ‘For ten silvers, and you are welcome to her, my lady fair. Now. Who wants to open the next bid? Come on, now, there’s some likely slaves up here.

Look at the muscle on these field-workers.

Spring planting is only a few months away, farmers. Can’t be ready too soon!’

‘Father! Please!’ Wintrow shouted, and then flinched away as the handler jabbed him again.

Slowly, Kyle Haven lifted his hand. ‘Five shards. For the boy.’

The crowd had a general laugh at this insulting bid.

One bought a bowl of soup for five copper shards, not a slave.

The auctioneer recoiled showily, his hand to his chest. ‘Five shards?’ he asked in mock dismay.

‘Oh, laddie, what did you do to displease papa so? Five shards I’m offered, five shards is where we start.

Anyone else interested in this five-shard slave? ’

A voice came up from the crowd. ‘Which boy is the one who can read, write and figure?’

Wintrow kept silent, but a guard helpfully replied, ‘He’s the one. Was in training to be a priest. Says he can work stained-glass, too.’

This final claim in such an apparently young boy put the others in doubt. ‘A full copper!’ someone laughingly bid.

‘Two!’

‘Stand up straight,’ the guard bid him and followed this advice with a nudge from his stick.

‘Three,’ his father said sullenly.

‘Four!’ This was from a laughing young man at the edge of the crowd. He and his companions nudged one another and shifted, their gazes going from Wintrow to his father. Wintrow’s heart sank. If his father became aware of their game, there was no telling how he’d react.

‘Two silvers,’ someone called, apparently thinking she could make a quick end of the bidding with a large increase. Two silvers, he was to learn later, was still a low bid for a new and unpromising slave, but it was within the realm of acceptability.

‘Two silvers!’ the auctioneer called out with enthusiasm.

‘Now, my friends and neighbours, we are taking this young man seriously. He reads, writes and figures! Claims to do stained-glass, but we shan’t make much of that, shall we?

A useful lad, bound to get bigger as he can’t get smaller; a tractable, trainable boy. Do I hear three?’

He did, and it was not from Wintrow’s father or the hecklers.

The bids shot up to five silvers before the real buyers began shaking their heads and turning aside to examine other waiting merchandise.

The boys at the edge of the crowd continued bidding until Torg was sent to stand beside them.

He scowled at them, but Wintrow clearly saw him offer them a handful of coins to leave off their game.

Ah. So that was how it was done and the whole purpose of it.

A few moments later, his father bought him for seven silvers and five whole coppers.

Wintrow was unfastened from the coffle, and led forward by his manacles exactly as a cow might be.

At the bottom of the steps, he was turned over to Torg.

His father had not even come forward to receive him.

A tide of uneasiness arose in Wintrow. He held his wrists out to Torg to have the chains removed, but the sailor feigned not to notice them.

Instead he inspected Wintrow as if he were indeed just any other slave that his master had just purchased.

‘Stained-glass, eh?’ he scoffed, and got a general laugh from the handlers and other idlers at the base of the auction stage.

He gripped the chain between Wintrow’s wrist and dragged him forward.

Wintrow was forced to stumble after him, his ankles still hobbled.

‘Take the chains off,’ Wintrow told him as soon as they were free of the crowd.

‘And give you a chance to run again? I don’t think so,’ Torg replied. He was grinning.

‘You didn’t tell my father I was held here, did you? You waited. So I’d be marked like a slave and he’d have to buy me back.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Torg replied genially.

He was in fine fettle. ‘Were I you, I think I’d be grateful that your father happened to stay at the auctions this long, and saw you and bought you.

We sail tomorrow, you know. Got our full load, he was just thinking to pick up a few last-minute bargains. Got you instead.’

Wintrow shut up. He debated the wisdom of telling his father what Torg had done.

Would it sound as if he was whining, would his father even believe him?

He searched the faces they passed, looking for his father in the gathering dusk.

What expression would he wear? Anger? Relief?

Wintrow himself was caught between trepidation and gratitude.

Then he did catch sight of his father’s face. He was far off, and not even looking towards Wintrow and Torg. He appeared to be bidding on the two farmhands who were being sold together. He didn’t even glance at his own son in chains.

‘My father’s over there,’ Wintrow pointed out to Torg. He halted stubbornly. ‘I want to speak to him before we go back to the ship.’

‘Come on,’ Torg grunted cheerfully. ‘I don’t think he wants to speak to you.

’ He grinned to himself. ‘In fact, I doubt he thinks you’d make a good first mate any more when he gives the captaincy over to Gantry.

I think he fancies me for that job, now.

’ He uttered this with great satisfaction, as if he expected Wintrow to be astounded by it.

Wintrow stopped walking. ‘I want to speak to my father, now.’

‘No,’ Torg replied simply. His greater bulk and muscle easily overmatched Wintrow’s resistance.

‘Walk or be dragged, it’s all one to me,’ he assured him.

Torg’s eyes were roving, looking over the heads of a cluster of folk standing about.

‘Ah,’ he exclaimed suddenly, and surged forward, hauling Wintrow behind him.

They halted before a tattooist’s block. He was just freeing a dazed woman from the collar while her impatient buyer tugged on her shackles for her to hurry and follow him.

The tattooist looked up at Torg and nodded.

‘Kyle Haven’s mark?’ he asked, gesturing at Wintrow affably.

Evidently they had been doing a lot of business.

‘Not this one,’ Torg said, to Wintrow’s instant and vast relief.

He supposed there was some freedom trinket or sign to purchase here.

His father would not be happy about that extra expense either.

Wintrow was already wondering if there were not some way to gently abrade or bleach the new tattoo from his face.

Painful as that would be, it would be far better than to wear this sign on his face the rest of his life.

The sooner he put this misadventure behind him, the better.

He had already decided that when his father did decide to speak to him, Wintrow would give him an honest promise to remain aboard the ship and serve him well to the end of his fifteenth year.

Perhaps it was time he accepted the role Sa’s will had placed him in.

Perhaps this was supposed to be his opportunity to reconcile with his father.

The priesthood, after all, was not a place but an attitude.

He could find a way to continue his studies aboard the Vivacia.

And Vivacia herself was something to look forward to, he found.

A small smile began to dawn on his face as he thought of her.

Somehow he’d have to make up to her for his desertion, he’d have to convince her that—

Torg grabbed him by the back of his hair and forced his head down into the collar.

The tattooist snubbed it tight. Panicked, Wintrow fought it, but only succeeded in strangling himself.

Too tight, they’d pulled it too tight. He was going to pass out, even if he tried to just stand still and breathe, he wasn’t getting enough air and he couldn’t even tell them that.

Dimly he heard Torg say, ‘Mark him with a sign like this earring. He’s going to be ship’s property.

Bet it’s the first time in the history of Jamaillia City that a liveship bought a slave of her own. ’