by Kate Elliott
The master’s voice was his whip. “Enough!”
“Pardon, Brother. Pardon. I mean no disrespect. So, eh, ah. Is the slave a pretty one?”
“It is a slave.”
“I hope it was cheap. He’ll damage it soon enough.”
“Maybe not this one.”
After more turns, they walked under a gate into a dusty courtyard that smelled of dusty water and dusty leaves.
“Take it into the storehouse,” the master said.
He went away. The barefoot one led her into a building. As soon as they walked into the dim confines she began to shake, for here exactly were cribs like the cells of the brothel. She was afraid to cry, because crying got her whipped. They walked to the end of the corridor and into a room with a window onto another courtyard shining so brightly green that the colors made her eyes hurt. A fountain splashed, moisture tickled her nose. She clutched the cloth tightly around her head, but kept a slit open toward the window so she could see the beautiful green foliage and the flowers, orange and white and pink, nestled along the branches. Four young children played beside the fountain; a woman seated on a stool nearby mended clothing.
The door opened.
“Look it over,” said the master. “You’ll see why I bought it.”
A hand tugged on the cloth, and she released it and cringed as she saw five people staring at her: the master and another man who looked enough like him to be his brother, two women, and a huge barefoot man. All but the master made warding signs.
The two women were likely cousins or sisters. They stared at her for a long time, then looked at each other, as sisters and cousins will, sharing stories in the tilt of a head and the shift of a mouth and the way an eyebrow lifts. Then they looked at the master and his brother, at the stiff way the men were standing.
The older of the women said, “Mountain, take its clothing off. I don’t want to touch it.”
Reluctantly, the big man minced forward and began the difficult task of removing her clothing without actually touching her.
“It’s a demon, husband,” said the younger one. “Look at those blue eyes! Just like cornflowers. Bad luck! Why do you bring a demon into our clan?”
“For Girish.”
“Grandmother won’t like it,” said the brother.
The master snorted.
The older woman said, irritably, “Grandmother has been letting Girish do as he pleases. I’ve already been put to the expense of purchasing and training new slaves. She’s blind to his habits—”
The master’s expression darkened. “Do not speak of my honorable mother in such a tone, Wife!”
She flinched. “Pardon, Husband. Pardon.”
The younger woman broke in, “What if it is diseased? It could infect everyone—”
The slave tugged off her dirty undertunic. She stood naked before them. The master’s hand strayed low, but with a deliberate shift he reached up and scratched his jaw instead. The brother had no such control. Her pale skin and pale hair and blue eyes never ceased to excite and horrify. That was what demons were: an evil lure to tempt people into the wastelands where they would be devoured down to the bone.
The older woman’s horror receded as her gaze narrowed with calculation. “No other man in Kartu can claim to own a demon. It might content Girish, now that he’s clamoring for a wife.”
“An allowance, and the demon,” said the brother. “That might shut him up.”
“Pardon, Husband,” said the younger woman to the master, “pardon me that I speak out so boldly, but if you perhaps might be willing to tell Girish also that you will take the demon away from him if he molests the slaves.” She hesitated, dipping her head submissively.
“I am not unaware of the trouble Girish has caused you, or of his disordered and repulsive habits,” said the master with a stern frown that squelched conversation. “Let us see if this contents him.”
27
“It’s so ugly,” said Girish with his habitual giggle as he hauled her into the smoky interior of the narrow house and shoved her toward a stained couch hidden behind a screen. “I don’t know what you see in it, Ramda.” His hands were shaking with excitement as his voice rose in a petulant whine. “What do you have for me today? You promised me something new.”
Ramda was a thin, nervous man who never looked directly at her. He flicked a hand toward the curtained entrance to the back rooms, not watching as Girish pushed past the curtain and vanished.
“Here.” Ramda handed her a lit smoke.
She brought it to her lips and sucked. Warmth spread from tingling lips down into her throat. She sighed, taking another suck as the warmth spread throughout her body. When Ramda limped over and dropped his trousers, she took another suck and let him press her back onto the couch with its lumps and damp spots. After a while he finished. Other customers came and went in the main room, and sometimes after coin changed hands a man might step behind the screen and lie down on top of her, breath hot against her face. The ceiling of the hall was half obscured by threads of smoke that traced patterns along the wood. She followed their slow dance with her eyes, the way smoke crawled up the slope of the eaves or pooled beside brackets and beams. Coin jingled. Men laughed. Dice rolled. A child’s thin scream penetrated the smoke, and for a moment all fell quiet.
Then they started up again, gaming, drinking, smoking, talking. She drowsed in the warmth.
An argument erupted in the main room. The warmth was beginning to wear off as the smoke lost its hold. Ramda never gave her more than one for herself, and every time the ache of its leaving prodded her like a fresh wound. She fumbled with the ties of her long jacket, closing it over her naked body. Shoved from the other side, the screen clattered down on top of her. She fell off the couch, found herself sitting on the loose trousers slaves wore, her thighs sticky.
“Come! Come!” Girish shouted at her as he wiped blood from his hands with a cloth. She struggled clumsily to get the trousers on, unable to remember having taken them off.
Ramda shuffled in behind him. “Get out!” His hair was mussed as if he had combed it with his hands. “That’s the second one this month you damaged. I don’t want you to come back.”
“You cheating dog! You said it was a new one, but I saw the same one last week over at Nonku’s chop. I wanted a fresh one. One that will really be scared.” He grabbed her by the braids and tugged her. She tripped over the trousers, which she hadn’t gotten up over her knees. The long jacket bunched and tangled around her hips. He slapped her once, twice, a third time. “I hate you! I hate you!” He spat at her. “You’re the cause of all my trouble, demon!”
“Here, now,” said Ramda, hands trembling as he picked up the screen and set it aright. “No need to hit it. It’s just a slave.”
“It’s a demon. I wanted a wife, and they gave me a demon because they are pigs and scorpions, my own relatives! They’re just jealous because Mother loves me best.”
“You’re drunk, Girish. Would you get out?”
“If you don’t let me come back, you’ll not get to poke her again, eh? And what of the other men? I know you sell her stinking flower while I’m inside, heh, heh.” He rubbed his fingers together as if he was feeling the texture of a coin. “Don’t think I don’t know that you’re padding your sleeve with a little coin on the side, selling the demon while I’m busy elsewhere, eh? Heh.”
She wrestled her trousers up and tied them, then tugged down the long jacket.
Ramda stared mournfully at her, remembered himself, and looked away. “If you damage my goods, you can’t come back, Girish. I can’t keep replacing the things you break.”
Girish handed him coin. “You can replace it. Here. Get some new ones this time.”
Ramda sighed, taking the coin. “You’re rich, suddenly. Did Father Mei increase your allowance?”
“My brother?” Girish dropped the bloodied cloth to the ground, spat on it. “He begrudges every copper.”
He hooked the leash to the slave b
racelet she wore on her right wrist and yanked her after him, out the door and into the alley. The sun’s light staggered her; its heat was a blow. When she stumbled, he whipped her with the end of the leash.
“Come on! Come on!” He whipped her again, and again, smiling as she cowered. “Put your hands down. Put your hands down.”
So she did, and let him strike her across the torso and shoulders, shuddering under the lash, until he grew tired of the sport of seeing her cower submissively before him.
“We’re late. Stupid demon. Why do you always make me late?”
She walked behind, her gaze fixed on the ground, as he hurried onto a side street and through town to the market. Now, seeing acquaintances, he was all gracious smiles, smooth greetings, heartfelt inquiries after aged relatives and promising children, and unctuous agreement with whispered diatribes against their Qin overlords. Women in the marketplace flirted with him as he browsed their wares, because he was a good-looking young man from a respectable clan. But there was still a speck of blood on the palm of his right hand. There was always blood on his hands; she just pretended there wasn’t. The smokes Ramda gave her hid her aches, but they couldn’t hide the blood. They couldn’t hide the screams.
“Eh, there is the lovely Mai. How are you faring, Niece?” He fetched up before a fruit stand. “Have you sold your quota today? Ensnared a wealthy husband, eh?”
Father Mei’s eldest daughter sold fruit in the market, and she stared placidly at Girish from under the shade of a parasol. “Uncle Girish. Here you are. Sales are good today, although the peaches are a little underripe. Of course Father Mei will choose a suitable husband for me. Maybe next year.”
“You are such a stupid stupid girl, Mai,” he said with a grin. “Here, give me a peach.”
He grabbed, but the girl snatched up a peach and pressed it into his hand before he could topple her neatly stacked pile. He sulked, then spotted a pair of young men strutting down another lane. “Hei! Hei!” he called.
As he turned to go after them, Mai slipped a peach into her hand. “Here, Cornflower. Something for you.”
Horrified, she tried to hand it back, but he was already trotting toward his friends, and the leash, tugged taut, forced her to stumble along after lest he whip her for slowing him down.
His friends greeted him with lively expressions of joy—obviously drunk—and they fell to talking about some race meant to be held out beyond the walls in a few days’ time, not that any of the locals were allowed to ride horses on penalty of death, but they could bet on the Qin soldiers who would be racing for the honor of their individual companies. Glancing back, his smile twisted and a flare of anger widened his eyes.
“Did you steal that, demon?” He snatched the peach out of her hand. “Whew! A nice ripe one. Here.” He offered it to his friends.
“Not after the demon touched it!”
He shrugged. “Eh, you’re right. Tainted now. Probably make any of us sick.” He squeezed it until juices began to run, then gave it a heave up over the rooftops. They walked on, chattering, as she trailed behind, grateful she had not been beaten. At length the friends left him, and he made many twists and turns through back alleys and arrived at a tavern’s back entrance. Slipping inside, he was stopped by two Qin soldiers lurking in the corridor.
“Chain the demon up outside,” they told him. “The commander does not want the creature anywhere close.”
“Chain her outside, and anyone who sees her will know I came here and wonder why.”
They grunted, and settled on shoving her into a tiny storeroom. She sank down between two barrels, head resting against the wall. It was nothing more than a thin barrier of wood, and through it she heard Girish’s whine and the calmer rumble of a man speaking with the Qin way of chopping off k’s and swallowing r’s.
“This man said this, this man said that. . . .” Names and complaints rolled off Girish’s tongue as the Qin officer questioned him for details of the most incriminating and treasonous remarks made by the inhabitants of Kartu Town.
She shut her eyes. If she did not think, she would not hurt. How many days until he went back to Ramda’s? He usually could not afford to go more than once a month, so she had another passage of the moon to hunger for the smoke. She could still taste it in her mouth, but the warmth had drained out of her.
“Hei! Hei! Lazy demon!”
The leash flicked so hard against a breast that she gasped. Hurry. Hurry. She scrambled up, and he hit her a few more times as the Qin soldiers watched impassively. When he pulled her past them, they stepped back so as not to touch her. An open door revealed a man dressed in a golden tabard, sitting on a pillow as he sipped from a cup. He glanced up with his demon-scratched eyes. Seeing her, he made a warding sign and gave a signal, and an unseen servant closed the door.
Out on the street, folk stared as Girish strode past with her on a leash behind. The Mei demon, they called her. Girish liked their whispering and pointing. Today he hummed under his breath, always a bad sign. He rarely used her, and then only at night when he was particularly restless and couldn’t sleep. His brothers, and the other males in the house, eyed her when they thought he was not looking, and their desire pleased Girish, who dragged her everywhere with him on the leash so he could gloat that he held what others lusted after. Everyone knew what he was, but they stared as at the smoke on the ceiling and pretended not to see and hear, not as long as the blood did not touch them.
Despite its orderly environs, the slave and livestock market stank of piss, fear, manure, and despair. Giggling now, he strode to the open corrals behind his favorite warehouse.
“Master Girish! So nice to see you. Please, please, this way. What are you looking for?”
“Ah, eh, yes. My mother desires a few children, pretty ones, to decorate her chamber and wait on her. What do you have that’s fresh and new, nothing damaged.”
She stared at her feet, browned by the sun. Long sleeves covered her pale arms, and loose trousers covered her pale legs, the jacket buttoned up to her neck. A cap shaded her face; he whipped her if she forgot to wear it. But her feet and hands might turn brown, resembling the color of human skin. She wondered that if she were to turn brown all over, if she would become human, but maybe a demon could never be human, no matter what it once had believed it was.
“Cousin! Cousin!”
Her ears puzzled over the strange word. Her mind made a funny twist, and suddenly she was staring at her feet in the middle of a dusty, stinking, filthy pit of demons wondering why she was hearing true speech again. She looked up. In the fenced area in front of her huddled about twenty children, very young, dressed in little more than rags and looking thin and dirty. She saw him immediately because his dark hair and coloring and features were instantly familiar. He was a boy of the tribes, no more than eleven years of age, someone like her taken as a slave and sold away into demon land.
“I like the look of that one,” said Girish, following her gaze. He pointed at the boy. “Where’s it from?”
The merchant shrugged. “Western tribes. There are so many of them out there, and they’re all savages. I bought it on the Qin borderlands. You can see it’s not a demon, not like that one you have there. I’ll purchase her from you. Female demons are rare, I don’t mind saying.”
“Not for sale.” Girish had a hefty pouch of coin in his hand. She’d never seen him with so much coin. He was usually begging for more, but not now. With a satisfied smirk, he counted out silver into the merchant’s open hand. “Send that boy and the other three I indicated to Ramda’s house. You know the place.”
The merchant frowned uneasily, scratched his ear with his free hand, and sighed as he closed his hand over the payment. “If you say so, Master. It’s just that Ramda’s house is known for—”
“Eh? What’s that?”
“Nothing, Master. I hear you can get a good smoke there. I’ll have them there by this evening.”
A small voice trembled from the huddle of child slaves, spea
king words no one but she could understand. “Cousin! Can you hear me? Aren’t you of the tribes?”
Girish yanked so hard on the leash she fell onto her buttocks. Laughing, he dragged on her so she had to scramble backward on heels and forearms trying to get turned around as he cut back through the slave market. Eventually he tired of the joke and let her clamber to her feet.
“Come on, come on.” He took a brisk pace, humming and giggling, until they reached the Mei compound.
“Mountain!” he shouted. “Mountain! I want a bath. Right away, you fat oaf!” He slapped her. “Demon, brew me some tea. You know how I like it.” He strode off.
She remained in the family courtyard, shaking as with a fever. The boy’s hopeful, frightened, desperate gaze burned in her mind’s eye.
One never knows what gifts a stranger will bring. She touched the beaded nets that capped the ends of her braids. The memory of the boy’s gaze was enough to make her remember Mariya and Orphan and Kontas and the tribe, when after all this time she had forgotten.
“Cornflower?”
The master’s youngest brother paused while walking across the paved courtyard. Shai was the worst of them, because he stared the most at her when he thought no one was looking.
“You look like you’ve been dragged through the dirt,” he added. Mercifully, he looked away. He had thick arms and strong hands, these clenched now as he muttered. “Why does everyone look away and say nothing when they know what is happening?”
She said nothing.
After a moment, with a mighty sigh of frustration, he walked into the house.
She knew what was happening, no matter how much she stared at the smoke curling along the ceiling. Enough. She would not give that boy to Girish, not him and not the others.
In the compound of the Mei clan, slaves padded silently about their tasks. Compared with the misery of the brothel and the nightmare of the caravan, it was not a bad life as long as you did not ignite Father Mei’s legendary temper or get in the middle of a dispute between jealous wives or aggravate one of Grandmother’s petty grievances. As long as you ignored what Girish was, and what he did.
