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Wintrow took his hands away, but stood close still. She rested her head on Lem's chest. “I love you,” she said simply. “You are all that has made this life bearable. Thank you. ” She took a breath that came out as a sigh. “Thank the others for me. For the warmth of their bodies, for doing more that my less might not be noticed. Thank them. . . . ”
Her words trailed off and Wintrow saw Sa blossoming in her face. The travails of this world were already fading from her mind. She smiled, a smile as simple as a babe's. “See how beautiful the clouds are today, my love. The white against the gray. Do you see them?”
As simply as that. Unchained from her pain, her spirit turned to contemplation of beauty. Wintrow had witnessed it before but it never ceased to amaze him. Once a person had realized death, if they could turn aside from pain they immediately turned toward wonder and Sa. It took both steps, Wintrow knew that. If a person had not accepted death as a reality, the touch could be refused. Some accepted death and the touch, but could not let go of their pain. They clung to it as a final vestige of life. But Gala had let go easily, so easily that Wintrow knew she had been longing to let go for a long time.
He stood quietly by and did not speak. Nor did he listen to the exact words she spoke to Lem. Tears coursed down Lem's cheeks, over the scars of a hard life and the embedded dyes of his slave tattoo. They dripped from his roughly shaven chin. He said nothing, and Wintrow purposely did not hear the content of Gala's words. He listened to the tone instead and knew that she spoke of love and life and light. Blood still moved in a slow red trickle down her bare leg. He saw her head loll on her shoulder as she weakened, but the smile did not leave her face. She had been closer to death than he had guessed; her stoic demeanor had deceived him. She would be gone soon. He was glad he had been able to offer her and Lem this peaceful parting.
“Hey!” A bat jabbed him in the small of his back. “What are you doing?”
The slave broker gave Wintrow no time to answer. Instead he pushed the boy aside, dealing him a bruising jab to the short ribs as he did so. It knocked the wind out of his lungs and for a moment, all he could do was curl over his offended mid-section, gasping. The broker stepped boldly into the midst of his coffle, to snarl at Lem and Gala. “Get away from her,” he spat at Lem. “What are you trying to do, get her pregnant again, right here in the middle of the street? I just got rid of the last one. ” Foolishly, he reached to grab Gala's unresisting shoulder. He jerked at the woman but Lem held her fast even as he uttered a roar of outrage. Wintrow would have recoiled from the look in his eyes alone, but the slave broker snapped Lem in the face with the small bat, a practiced, effortless movement. The skin high on Lem's cheek split and blood flowed down his face. “Let go!” the broker commanded him at the same time. Big as the slave was, the sudden blow and pain half-stunned him. The broker snatched Gala from his embrace, and let her fall sprawling into the bloody dirt. She fell bonelessly, wordlessly, and lay where she had bled, staring beatifically up at the sky. Wintrow's experienced eye told him that in reality she saw nothing at all. She had chosen to stop. As he watched, her breath grew shallower and shallower. “Sa's peace to you,” he managed to whisper in a strained voice.
The broker turned on him. “You've killed her, you idiot! She had at least another day's work in her!” He snapped the bat at Wintrow, a sharply stinging blow to the shoulder that broke the skin and bruised the flesh without breaking bones. From the point of his shoulder down, pain flashed through his arm, followed by numbness. Indeed, a well-practiced gesture, some part of him decided as he yelped and sprang back. He stumbled into one of the other hobbled slaves, who pushed him casually aside. They were all closing on the broker and suddenly his nasty little bat looked like a puny and foolish weapon. Wintrow felt his gorge rise; they would beat him to death, they'd jelly his bones.
But the slave broker was an agile little man who loved his work and excelled at it. Lively as a frisking puppy, he spun about and snapped out with his bat, flick, flick, flick. At each blow, his bat found slave flesh, and a man fell back. He was adept at dealing out pain that disabled without damaging. He was not so cautious with Lem, however. The moment the big man moved, he struck him again, a sharp snap of the bat across his belly. Lem folded up over it, his eyes bulging from their sockets.
And meanwhile, in the slavemart, the passing traffic continued. A raised eyebrow or two at this unruly coffle, but what did one expect of map-faces and those who mongered them? Folk stepped well wide of them and continued on their way. No use to call to them for help, to protest he was not a slave. Wintrow doubted that any of them would care.