Ship of Magic

Page 230

“Oh, my darling, oh, my love!” she was caterwauling, even as the darkness swirled around him and took him down.

The slavemart stank. It was the worst smell that Wintrow had ever encountered. He wondered if the smell of one's own kind in death and disease was naturally more offensive than any other odor. Instinctively, he wished to be away from here. It was a bone-deep revulsion. Despite the misery he saw, his sympathy and outrage were overwhelmed by his disgust. Hurry as he might, he could not seem to find an escape from this section of the city.

He had seen animals confined in large numbers before, even animals gathered together for slaughter, but their misery had been dumb and uncomprehending. They had chewed their cuds and lashed their tails at flies as they awaited their fates. Animals could be held in pens or yards. They did not need to be secured in both manacles and leg-irons. Nor did animals shout or sob their misery and frustration in words.

“I can't help you, I can't help you. ” Wintrow heard himself muttering the words aloud and bit down on his tongue. It was true, he assured himself. He could not help them. He could no more break their chains than they could. Even if he had been able to undo their fetters, what then? He could not erase the tattoos from their faces, could not help them flee and escape. Evil as their fates were, it was best if he left each one to face it and make the best he could of it. Some, surely, would find freedom and happiness later in their lives. This extreme of misery could not last forever.

As if in agreement with that thought, a man passed him trundling a barrow. Three bodies had been dumped in it and, despite their emaciation, the man pushed it with difficulty. A woman trailed after him, weeping disconsolately. “Please, please,” she burst out as they passed Wintrow. “At least let me have his body. What good is it to you? Let me take my son home and bury him. Please, please. ” But the man pushing the barrow paid her no notice. Nor did anyone else in the hurrying, crowded street. Wintrow stared after them, wondering if perhaps the woman was crazy, perhaps it was not her son at all and the man with the barrow knew it. Or perhaps, he reflected, everyone else in the street was crazy, and had just seen a heart-sick mother begging for the dead body of her son, and had done nothing about it. Including himself. Had he so swiftly become inured to human pain? He lifted his eyes and tried to see the street scene afresh.

It overwhelmed him. In the main part of the street, folk strolled arm in arm, dawdling to look at booths just as they might in any marketplace. They spoke of color and size, of age and sex. But the livestock and goods they perused were human. There were simple coffles standing in courtyards, a string of people chained together, offered in lots or singles, for general work on farms or in town. At the corner of the courtyard, a tattooist plied his trade. He lounged in a chair beside a leather-lined head vise and an immense block of stone with an eye-bolt worked into it. For a reasonable price, the chant rose, a reasonable price, he would mark any newly purchased slave with the buyer's emblem. The boy calling this out was tethered to the stone. He wore only a loincloth, despite the winter day, and his entire body had been lavishly embellished with tattoos as a means of advertising his master's skill. For a reasonable price, a reasonable price.

There were buildings that housed slaves, their specialties advertised on their swinging signs. Wintrow saw an emblem for carpenters and masons, another for seamstresses, and one that specialized in musicians and dancers. Just as any type of folk might fall into debt, so one might acquire any type of slave. Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, Wintrow thought to himself. Tutors and wet nurses and scribes and clerks. Why hire what you could buy outright? That seemed to be the philosophy here in the slavemart, yet Wintrow wondered how those shopping for slaves could not see themselves in their faces, or recognize one's neighbors. No one else seemed disturbed by it. Some might hold a lace kerchief fastidiously to the nose, distressed by the odor. They did not hesitate to demand a slave stand, or walk, or trot in a circle the better to inspect him. Latticed-off areas were provided for the more private inspection of the females for sale. It seemed that, in the eyes of the buyers, a failure of finances instantly changed a man from a friend or neighbor into merchandise.

Some, it appeared, were not too badly housed and kept. They were the more valuable slaves, the well-educated and talented and skilled. Some few of those even appeared to take a quiet pride in their own worth, holding themselves with pride and assurance despite being marked with a tattoo across the face. Others were what Wintrow heard referred to as “map-faces,” meaning that the history of their owners could be traced by the progression of different tattoos. Usually such slaves were surly and difficult; tractable slaves often found permanent homes. More than five tattoos usually marked a slave as less than desirable. They were sold more cheaply and treated with casual brutality.